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2004 Election Weirdness Continues
I've read dozens of submissions about election anomalies in the last week and they show no sign of slowing so I've decided to post a few of the main ones here to let you all discuss them. The first is the Common Dreams report
that shows that
optically scanned votes have a strange anomoly in florida: the Touchscreen counties roughly matched up to party registration numbers, but optically scanned paper ballot counties showed strangeness like one county where 69.3% registered democrat, but only 28% of them voted for Kerry.
Palm Beach County, Florida logged 88,000 more votes than there were voters;
that machines in LaPorte, Indiana discounted 50,000 voters;
in Columbus, Ohio voting machines gave Bush an extra 4,000 votes;
in Broward County, Florida voting machines were counting backwards;
Lastly,
precincts in New Mexico gave provisional ballots that will never be counted to as many as 10% of all their voters.
It's all a democratic ploy to discredit or dethrone our duly elected Pope. The first rule of the Democratic process is: Do not talk about the Democratic process. The second rule of the Democratic process is: Do not question the Democratic process...
I don't trust this government.
Don't you mean, "First Vote!"
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Are you actually alleging that ALL THREE e-voting vendors - ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia - have found some way to add votes only to the Republican candidates, undetected?
.[1] Don't believe people who make it seem like companies like Diebold are resisting. They aren't. They'll build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
Do you think Kerry's $300M campaign, and the hundreds of experts who worked it for the better part of two years, just said "Oh, well! Guess we lost, even though there's proof of widespread fraud! Let's just throw in the towel and not say anything about it!" Wake up.
These are EXACTLY the kinds of problems, i.e., errors and failures in equipment (and setup) that we aim to prevent. But it is not possible for a central entity to control the vote.
We do need verified voting, but I'm sorry to say that there was no widespread fraud in all e-voting states. It's just not possible. There are thousands of people involved, thousands of pieces of equipment, many, many, many election and other government officials at all levels in extremely disparate jurisdictions with different ways of doing things, with no way for any central entity to reach these machines after the fact. (And no, they don't come "preloaded" with votes for Republican candidates; the logistics of the way they're set up and the diversity of the the configurations also makes that impossible.)
Bush won. Again. Get over it.
H.R.2239 and S.1980, discussed further here [verifiedvoting.org], will amend the Help America Vote Act (an act designed to ensure consistent voting systems that meet certain standards be available to ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions), such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter.
Please, simply support this legislation.
Additionally, the electronic voting manufacturers, such as Diebold, already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products
The roadblock, as it turns out, is often local election boards. First, the new paper verification systems NEED to go through the government certification process - remember, it's the e-voting watchdogs who are chastising non-certified patches/updates being put into place; the paper audit systems need to go through the same certification process. Further, many municipalities can't understand why they should be forcing paper audit trails; after all, they think, they are just getting away from paper ballots - why should they be arguing for paper ballots (and all the headaches that go along with them, ON TOP of the headaches they already have from learning to deal with e-voting), so why should they go back to them?
Folks, so many people are involved in elections at so many different levels that there is literally no way that any central entity could rig an election across an entire state. Experts dealing with e-voting don't even have this on their radar. Their concern is more errors and failures. E.g., most of Ohio is still punchcard as it is (the majority of the 35 counties moving to e-voting pushed off the transition until AFTER the election because of problems), and someone like Diebold doesn't even have access to this equipment after the fact. Yes, an unscrupulous election official or enterprising hacker might be able to breach individual machines and potentially even a county - it's possible. But the likelihood of something like that happening on any significant scale, ESPECIALLY without being caught (the articles we're talking about here actually prove that the audit processes, be they what they are, do work) is very, very low.
That said, we absolutely sho
But all of this does not change the fact that at least a substantial part of the nation voted for Bush. Don't forget that.
Clearly the voting machines in my home state of FL were deployed pre-programmed to elect the Governor's Brother...until they took on a life of their own and started killing people.
That is all.
...but i'm thinking that statistically there were probably annomalies in favor of both candidates...we're just only hearing about the one's that helped bush and hurt kerry because they make for the most sensationalistic story...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Yes, but are any of these anomalies statistically significant? If not, it's just random noise regardless of the source.
The owls are not what they seem
Bush won that state by ~136,000 votes, and the 4000 + however many absentee ballots are for Kerry probably still wouldn't be enough.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
to put me down for pointing out the glaringly obvious. Democracy is easily stolen, but I was ridiculed for mentioning that last wednesday. Dont you realize this isnt about Bush? I dont care who won! Its about E-voting removing your right to affect change in your country by making a democratic choice.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
It's not about trying to get Kerry into office. It's about the fact that the voting system is flawed.
I believe Bush won fairly (even though I despise his policies), but I also believe we need to work on getting the most accurate vote count possible, and that's only possible when we admit there are flaws. Geesh.
You go to vote and your not even id. "Name, adress....ok go ahead."
Can the potential difference in votes amount to a larger number than the margins by which either candidate won in a given state?
If not, the only concern should be to correct the problems and not to overturn the election right?
Blaze a trail to the New World
Your party lost the 2004 Presidential Election by nearly 4,000,000 (Four Million) votes. Please stop whining. Thank you.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
Does anyone else get the impression that this kind of crap has been going on since day one? At least now we're paying more attention and noticing it -- that's a good thing.
The Florida Election "inconsistencies" page was emailed to me earlier. Here's what I sent to my friend in reply:
Well, it's interesting, but that's not a useful study, just a dump of a bunch of numbers. There has been at least one serious documented instance of major electronic voting machine failure/fraud in Ohio (the precinct that counted 4,000 too many Bush votes), but this isn't even an analysis let alone proof of anything in Florida.
They list number of registered Republicans and Democrats, but don't show how those same countries voted in the last Presidential election, and more importantly, they don't show any exit poll results.
Exit polls, bitching aside, are probably the most important way we have of validating actual voter result numbers county-by-county and precinct-by-precinct. The best way to flag fraud is to note when the exit polls are substantially out of line with actual returns, and particularly if they are out of line in a systematic (and unpredicted) way.
Beyond that, I have several questions about these numbers shown.
While I have every reason to distrust Diebold given their atrocious history of faulty machines and rabid partisanship, it's hard to believe that a conspiracy of three vendors, all of whom sold optical scan machines to different precincts, worked together to create this fraud.
Furthermore, the most rural counties seem to be the ones that had the most radically Republican results, despite Democratic voter registrations. This just seems to be in pattern with the rest of the South - the thing about Florida as any long time resident will tell you is that southern Florida, and its urban parts in general are culturally much closer to the Northeast, while the rest of Florida is culturally much closer to the South (the accents follow the same pattern too - they speak with a Southern drawl in a lot of the rest of the state).
And registered Democrats voting Republican in a Presidential election en masse is not news to the South.
So to demonstrate anything meaningful - show me the exit poll numbers side by side, and then let's see if there is any consistent and suspicious looking discrepancy not explained by the major cultural divides within Florida, or the extensive attention paid by Republicans to the I4 corridor area in their campaigning.
Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward.
Rule #1: Do not use signed shorts to count the total number of votes.
something tells me that either party would "not hesitate to cheat in order to win"...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
What about the real story, that George Bush is attempting to eliminate his enemies? This should be front-page news.
You probably shouldn't click this.
This issue is a central issue to insure that democracy is treated a valid type of government. Everyone must feel that the effort they put forth to vote is respected and heard. The only way we can lead the world on this is to set a good example and to purse with vigilence all reports of vote counting error.
Jeoin
I said, right at the bottom, that I took much of that from a couple of my previous posts on this topic. And I also am a slashdot subscriber, so I had time to put it together beforehand.
It is funny how the county clerks in all the problem counties are democratic hacks. If there is a problem it is with the CLERKS in those counties and with the idiot voters in those counties.
The problem with issues such as these, especially with the Diebold machines is such that the person who CHOSE them should be sacked (IE the Democratic County Clerks).
I am sorry, but I don't feel sorry for anyone. NO, I didn't vote for BUSH either. Both are losers.
Next time, vote LIBERTARIAN (or some other third party) and have your votes count less.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I dont really think it is about "Getting over it". The election was very close. I would say close enough that if these anomolies hold any truth, then the election may have had a different turnout without them.
I prefer to have it done right vs. just letting an undeserving candidate take a job that shouldnt be theirs.
(yes, my spelling is crap)
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I'm the first to say Diebold needs to be shot and some good, old-fashioned design time needs to be dedicated to electronic voting. But one word of caution: alot of these theories are based on comparing tabulated data to exit polls. Now as bad as the machines may be, I hardly think CNN's interns represent a more secure system of determining the election outcome.
The core problem, at least in my area, is that 1)it is considered "racist" to identify a voter by anything other than a simple "state your name and address" and 2) it is "racist" to purge the rolls of dead voters, etc. It is typically the Democrats that make these arguments.
It's over for this election, but what will stop it from happening next election? We need to fight for legislation to stop election fraud, or else anomolies like this may affect the 2008 election. -b0lt
got sig?
Please watch this free 30-minute film about black box voting machines.
We have all been scared about Diebold and other black box voting machines, and for good reason. Apparently one of the central machines from Election Systems & Software Inc. tallied 115 votes for Bush in a certain county, while another machine tallied 365 votes for that same county. Which one was right? There is no way to tell, because "it is too hard" to add a printer to a counting machine. It is not like they have been doing that for 30 years. But who needs to do a recount when the machines are infallible, right?
Most infuriating of all is that Republican Senator Hagel, the former Senate Ethics Director, resigned after admitting that he owned Election Systems & Software! That's right, the same voting machine maker that 60% of ALL VOTES in the U.S. are counted on, the same one that provably miscounted votes in Ohio and other states, and the same one that refuses to print receipts to recount these votes. No wonder legislation trying to require printers on voting machines is taking so long to get through congress when congressmen can vote themselves into office without a paper trail.
No.
All anonmilies should be investigated, even the ones that don't have a chance of changing the outcome.
If cheating is going on, then it should be stopped. No exceptions.
Even if it's just stupidity and not malice, it should be stopped.
-- should you believe authority without question?
If Bush has the ability to cause cancer when he wills it, the poster should take that down if he wants to keep his testicles.
This is not surprising; as the Diebold CEO has pledged to give Shrub the votes.
Right.
The Republicans faked 90% of every poll leading up to election day that showed Bush narrowly winning. And on election day they covertly added over 3 million votes to Bushes totals without anyone being caught red-handed, despite thousands of laywers and activists all over the country begging to catch someone in the act.
Signed 16-bit short anyone?
I can understand using signed numbers here -- at least the error would be obvious -- assuming noone just absolute values away the sign thinking they're clever. But how memory-limited are these systems not to at least use 24-bit or better yet 32-bit ints here? Is it really that much of a space savings to warrant districts subdividing becase the companies can't afford a little more memory in these things?
Or, is there something else I'm missing here...
hoy, and with the overwhelming amount of geeks that polled R... I thought that the D's would be hacking the Diebolds. D's hack & R's have the weapons....
Referring to anyone as "the kind of people" makes you look like a douchebag. You are the tart cart conspiracy theorist talking about the CEO of Diebold. Go get a new tin foil hat and learn to lose with some dignity.
my guy did lose, i don't agree with your "get over it" comment. but, your opinion doesn't make you a troll - that's just bad modding.
[This sig left intentionally blank.]
Is there anywhere I can invest in tinfoil futures?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I was wondering what happened to the www.blackboxvote.org site it seems to have been surruptitiously censored from the net hmmmmm......
Kerry conceided, and there's no take-backs.
Your side wins.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The machines where the software stored votes per precinct in an integer, causing the votes (having hit 32,767) to overflow.
I haven't written much code in a while, but I can figure out 'square peg, round hole'.
Ok, why does slashdot have to become a damn politics website. Why can't it just stay on the topic of technology and etc. For one it's leaning very much to one side so people who don't agree will probably just get annoyed and stop coming to the site all together. Hey there's a good way to keep your site popular. It's just really annoying.
Actually, it's La Porte County Indiana, Michigan City is the city. I voted there - figures we would screw something up.
-R14
int douche = 0; int turdSandwich = 0; if(voteFor = 'BUSH') douche++; else turnSandwich++;
--- nick
Voting irregularities happen all the time. When dealing with so many from so many places.. it's hard to do the job right. New systems, old systems, operator error, etc... these all go into effect. What purpose is posting an article like this with so little information about WHERE the votes were cast, or which votes were suppressed? It means NOTHING! Suppose all votes suppressed were for kerry, and all "extra" votes were for bush? Ok then you'd have an article! As it is you've got nothing more than sensationalist CRAP to stir up impressionable people that don't have the time to do the research on their own. Posting such drivel is highly irresponsible.
Did anyone here the call for unity by John Kerry? How about the one from Bush?
Kerry was a big man conceding as early as he did, he didn't have to, but he chose to make a difference in the best way he could... trying to help unify the nation after such a bitter election.
Apparently no one listened.
Stop B****ing and Make a Difference
Frost Pist!!!
jaaaaaaaaaaaa
I guess the main question is whether or not these differences are enough to change the outcome. Even Kerry admitted those 150,000 provisional ballots wouldn't help.
:(
Of course a mere 150000 wouldn't help, not after 1000000 votes were probably rigged to go to the other side
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
from the stuff-to-think-about dept.
More like "from the get over it and try again in 4 years."
We've heard every single excuse possible already, for all of the weak consperacy theories about Republicans, the democrats were the ones out slashing tires the night before the election, and assaulting people in line during the election.
I hope you are happy too. With all of the propaganda you fed the American people about this election, you managed to kill one of the weak willed people over the weekend who really believed all the BS you spout about Bush being "evil". Your party really needs to tune down the "Bush is the Anti-Christ" retoric. You would be a lot better off taking a moderate position. In case you haven't noticed, the Republican party ignores/kicks out it's extremists (ie Pat Buchanan) while the democrats embrace theirs.
One problem with these types of events is that nobody can say whether something happened or not. All you can say is that "the numbers don't fit a mental model of normalcy." The problem is that model may be wrong, or that something unusual happened.
If something unusual happened, well, statistically you can try and figure out how unusual the event was, but could you actually figure out if it was a "normal but unusual" event or a "fraud-related unusual" event?
Just because an event is extremely unlikely doesn't mean that it can't happen. People win the lottery every day, even though those events are highly unusual.
Can someone with some knowledge of statistics chime in?
BTW, palm beach found and corrected the 88k discrepancy.
In particular, tmoertel published a pretty good statistical smackdown on the theory of electronic irregularities in Ohio (this isn't my analysis - so I don't take credit for it):
==========
Thanks for sharing the data. Looking at it, I don't see any indications of Republican foul play. My analysis follows.
First, I loaded your data into R from The R Project for Statistical Computing:
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Certainly, voter fraud is a problem. But let's look at it this way. Bush won the popular vote by ~2-3 million votes (I don't rememeber number exactly). Even if all of the numbers thrown around in the post are valid, would you have said that a president that received a majority of the vote should not win?
Of course, if I had disliked Bush, my answer might be yes, but be honest here. Even if 300,000 votes were fraudulent, that doesn't change this election.
After all, Kerry conceded. That's the end of it. The votes matter not.
Sad but true. Now, the fact that people don't know how to keep paper trails is another matter... Why haven't they hired a BOFH? Sure, everyone gets hurt, but the computers get the job done!
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
I fully agree that the voting system should be as fair and accurate as possible, and is currently in need of improvement, but people do need to put things in perspective. Voting has always been a somewhat inaccurate process. I'd say there were more problems years ago when technology wasn't as advanced. But it only becomes a big issue when the election will be close. Nobody disputed Clinton's reelection victory over Dole because everyone knew Clinton would win; he was way ahead in the polls. With the 2000 fiasco in recent memory, a lot of focus was put on the 2004 election being as accurate as possible. Inevitably, there were some mistakes, as there always will be, but I'd say that compared to previous elections, this one was surprisingly accurate. The people who are complaining the loudest about problems seem to be primarily the ones who are simply not satisfied with the outcome.
Well one thing's for sure... If there WAS mass election fraud, there would be no way to find out.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Notice there are NO reports in the media of ballot count mistakes, or diebold glitches which gave Kerry votes. Hmmm Of all the precincts in the US, not one can be found to have one count mistake in Kerry's favor to report on.
Warning: turnSandwich not defined.
Obviously, harder than you think. (:
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
exactly... he's clearly Flamebait
Bush Hijacked the election and we have to live with the consequence for Four More Years because nobody is going to anything to fight it. What else is there to say...?
The most infamous one so far is Kerry Won. I live in the state of flordia and i know how floridians think. This state is democrat period. The polls on the last week even showed it. And so did the Exit Polling. And please save me the Liberal Whining as the former site is non-partisan, and of course the liberals will show that this election was robbed again because they would be the only ones who have interest to prove it!
...and it should be known by now
Here in Holland we have been using electronic voting machines for YEARS and nothing EVER went wrong. WHy can't the US with all their supreme technology not make a fail safe system like we have here?
Slashdot 1|0 Productivity
Personally, I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of any earth-shattering voter irregularities reported.
Sure, plenty of hickups, a few thousaand votes lost or misrepresennted here and there, but on the whole, nothing to really put any legitimate dispute as to the overall effect on the outcome of the Presidential Election
So while the system may not be perfect, it works for the most part and hopefully by 2008, we'll have better software in place.
The downside is that the lack of any real major problems reported will weaken arguements fort the adoption of OSS standards for voting software as well as ironing out some of the problems we still see with voter blacklists in Florida and elsewhere.
You are right. The outcome of the election will never be changed. It will never be allowed to. We can't allow this to continue though. The electoral process in this country should be as close to flawless as possible.
It is time to take the manufacture of voting devices and the auditing process out of the hands of partisans. And to all of you out there saying, "Boo hoo, Kerry lost. Get over it." How is it that Democracy in America is being hijacked, and you don't seem to give a shit? I'd wager you are the true anti-Americans. You do a lot of name calling, but when the shit hits the fan you show your true natures. Sunshine Patriots. Educate yourselves, and stand up for the Constitution you so loudly claim to believe in. Stop being little automatons.
-- "It was as if the paint factories had decided to deal direct with the art galleries." - Thursday Next
So Bush, instrumental in not acting on climate change, gains votes as the result of the increased frequency of hurricanes in Florida? Am I the only one to see a hole in this logic?
The differences are not enough to change the outcome. If they were even remotely close, there'd be an army of 100,000 lawyers from both parties raising hell and generally making both parties appear far more unappealing than they already are.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
You used '=' instead of '=='. If we assume that the constant BUSH is a non-zero value, then the test is always true, and all votes get counted for Bush. You've proven the point in spectacular fashion.
I mean fuck, if you can make a mistake like that in a simple one-liner, how many flaws do you think there are in a multi-KLoC system?
(holds out tinfoil hat)
Even if the anomalies were not were not enough to alter the outcome of the election, they may be enough to change who has the majority of the popular vote, which would affect the moral authority of the president.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Its numbers that haven't been updated since election night. The total count for president is correct. The one borken up by county is incorrect. Another forum someone asked the State Department instead of Tinfoiling about and that is what they said happen. Go ahead and call them or email themselves.
This information is interesting to look at:
http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm
I've also heard about how the exit polls were calling it for Kerry in Florida. Can some one please post a link to corresponding hard data for exit polls by various pollsters?
It would be interesting to analyse the exit poll data in conjunction with the data at the link shown above.
Thanks.
...but the title of the main story in the submission is:
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
It's comments like that that put people on the defensive, when we should be simply working to ensure ways to make the machines, systems, and processes more reliable, and that a voter-verified paper trail exists.
Though, someone raised a valid concern in a previous slashdot story: if we have so little faith in our ability to oversee, manage, and use e-voting systems, what's to stop any number of groups from demanding paper recounts in almost every jurisdiction, every time. Yes, our democracy is *that important*; I'm not saying it isn't. But this is a double-edged sword: many people have alleged that poorer communities have always gotten the shaft from old, poorly working, or broken election equipment; HAVA aims to ensure that consistent voting systems that meet a certain standard are available to ALL voters - and, naturally, we chose to go down the electronic path. We trust computers with just about everything under the sun: our power, our health, our lives, our money - and we've developed reliable systems for many tasks. Why can't the same be accomplished with e-voting? Sure, if Diebold itself was counting the votes on a single central computer under their control with no audit trail, I could understand the concern. But these are literally thousands of independent, non-network-connected systems in thousands of jurisdictions, monitored by people who have been charged with monitoring our elections forever.
So, what's fundamentally different now? And yes, I'm fully aware what not having a permanent audit trail means. We should have that. But that's not what I'm asking.
please do...
MY SECRET DIARIES
Your cause is woefully unsupported. Please stop fighting for justice and just have a hamburger.
Love,
Your Conquering Overlords
Seriously, just because narrow-mindedness, bigotry, self-service, and international vendetta and bullying is prevalent now doesn't mean it'll stay in style. People don't stop fighting for justice, peace, and equality just because they had a little setback. They cry, scream, and kick every step of the way, and when their cause is going to Hell they spit in the devil's eye on the way down.
So please, no more of this "please just lay down like a rug and take it like a good little Democrat" stuff. Yes, our candidate lost, which we will accept sure but not get over.
adam b.
...if these anomalies are more or less than the old paper system? i would probably guess they are close to the same. every time i have voted in every municipality i have voted in, the process has been a kludge. and for those who slam diebold et al, just remember, they delivered according to specification. it's not like they told their customer "no, you cannot have a paper trail" -- i mean, get real or something, huh? the paper system i would like to see would be a printout that looks just like the summary at the end of the process so you can verify both, then put the paper ballot in the bin and those votes are the ones counted during a recount. of course, i have also felt that if i do not want to vote FOR any candidates running in a particular race, i should be allowed to vote AGAINST one of them.
a polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate change.
In mine as with some other states in the country, the primary process is constructed such that the primary vote may or may not be restricted to people registered with that party, possibly giving incentive to register with some other party than your favorite.
Example: I live in Kansas. Here, any Kansas citizen was allowed to vote in the Democratic primary. Only registered Republicans could vote in the Republican primary. Thus, it could be in the interests of some Democrats to register Republican, since that way they'd be able to vote in *both* primaries.
I don't know enough about Florida's election laws to know if this applies in that state, but consider this a reason to pause for thought when comparing registered voter party counts against votes for/against a given party.
Coffee is my drug of choice.
s'ok, i got over it
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
'OBVIOUS'
That's the biggest load of horseshit I've read since the election ended.
The Democrats lost because they went too far left.
Keep tilting that way, and the Republicans will be in office for a very long time.
Interaction
d +v ote&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=
F(1,24)=19,887, p 0,001. p 0,001
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=anova+frau
this proves its faked
it's often argued on slashdot that variety in operating systems helps prevent monoculture. and monoculture is a surefire way for a hack or a worm or a virus to cause widespread catastrophic damage, rather than take out only a segment of machines.
the same argument applies to something like the irish potato famine or dutch elm disease: in these examples genetic monoculture leads to widespread devastation when a mutating disease hits the genetic jackpot and becomes an unstoppable pestilence.
so when i look at the tower of babel that is the various ways people vote in various precincts all over the country, my initial impulse is to standardize things to prevent a couple thousand votes getting forgotten here, or a couple thousand votes getting miscounted there. but that initial impulse runs up against what monoculture in genetics or operating systems teaches us about vulnerability to complete disaster.
so a couple thousands votes here and there got miscounted because of weird and wacky systems, some antiquated, some not ready for primetime, and some just plain bad? or even worse- that some partisan a**hole is messing around with the votes?
to me, that's ok, i can deal with that low-level noise: it doesn't drown out the signal.
because the solution: standardization, which promises to prevent wackiness by providing a uniform framework for spotting irregularities, is also the stepping stone for some serious hacks and catastrophic errors.
so i think that there will always be some bugs here and there, there always is. but better an unstoppable, low-level threshold of weirdness in voting irregularities than some monoculture of voting procedures that leads to some really serious devastation in our democracy... like one pimply teenager in his parent's basement deciding the election because he figured out a neat hack... that's so wrong on so many different levels! (lol)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ah... the Help America Vote peeps have just made things worse...
"Four years later, and none of the Florida problems were fixed. In fact, by all appearances, they spread from Florida to Ohio, New Mexico, Michigan and elsewhere. Worse, these problems only scratch the surface of what appears to have happened in Tuesday's election. The fix that was put in place to solve these problems - the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002 after the Florida debacle - appears to have gone a long way towards making things worse by orders of magnitude, for it was the Help America Vote Act which introduced paperless electronic touch-screen voting machines to millions of voters across the country."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804A.shtml
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
very interesting tidbit on www.howardstern.com about the average IQ ratings of states and who they voted for.
Look for this on the homepage
"State IQ Averages vs 11/02/04
Voting Record - Sad...
Click here for the sordid details..."
Could this be a reason for the Bush Administration's education policies? Keep 'em stupid and voting Republican! =]
And this surprises anyone?
"Do you think Kerry's $300M campaign, and the hundreds of experts who worked it for the better part of two years, just said "Oh, well! Guess we lost, even though there's proof of widespread fraud! Let's just throw in the towel and not say anything about it!"
Bush and Kerry both sworn into the same secret sociaties in Yale. Skull and Bones.
For Skull and Bones also see:
George Bush Snr and Prescott Bush.
Just because someone is registered Democrat does not mean they have to vote Democrat.
I would consider myself a very conservative Republican - yet I voted for Clinton in 1992 and 1996. As he was the right man for the time.
Also, what about the several hundred dogs that voted Democrat in Ohio, yes, dogs, as in Chows and Great Danes - they all voted Democrat. There were also a lot of dead people that voted Democrat in this election.
Look, however you hash it and whichever candidate cheated, you aren't going to find 3 million+ votes!!!
SLASHDOT HAS YET TO MENTION that Kerry cheated during the first debate - and that researching and enhancing the video would have been a great geek topic.
Further, I would like to add that Democrat Poll watchers in my area are under investigation for calling Republican voters and harassing them - I'm one they have harassed.
Because I did not like the unopposed candidate that was running for register of deeds - I had all my friends (47 total) vote for me - two of them have been called and told they were undermining our democracy by voting for me.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Which is why I'm never voting Democrat again. Wait till we count every vote my ass. Way to concede, John.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
It's human nature. People like people that give them things. Well, good things, like money and aid, not bad things like herpes.
I can probably explain. I am a registered Democrat in Ohio, but have been voting Republican for the past three elections. I understand the candidates differed somewhat on the issues of foreign and internal policy, but I wasn't really interested in those issues.
As a Web designer I appreciate quality standard-compliant Web design, and Bush's site passed the W3C validator test with fewer mistakes, while Kerry's generated more errors than Slashdot.org. If Bush can keep his XHTML+CSS in good order, I assume he can take good care of the country. My entire family of 16 voted Bush in these elections, even though we have 5 registered Democrats and 1 registered Libertarian.
Secretary of State spokeswoman Jenny Nash said all counties using this system had been told that such problems would occur if a precinct is set up in a way that would allow votes to get above 32,000
Somebody PLEASE tell me that that has nothing to do with 32,000 being close to the maximum value of a signed 16-bit number.
Who writes this software?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
This is the quote from the last link:
We had no way of knowing exactly how many voters used provisional ballots, but I estimate that probably 10% did so at my precinct. Now that we know that these provisional ballots will never be counted, this seems highly irregular.
This person wanted Kerry to win (she mentions she was optimistic that he would win, and that she was hopeful due to the new registrations coming in).
Yet, the 10% number is an estimate. There is no verification of it, absolutely no scientific basis for it all. No coroborrating evidence. It's simply a number that sounds plausible but can't be backed up in any way whatsoever scientifically.
Not only that, but its red herring. Regardless of the circumstances, if you vote in the wrong precinct or polling place you are not casting a legal vote (well, that's my understanding of New Mexico law, and I was uanble to find court rulings that changed it last minute. Anyone with more detailed knowledge, please feel free to rebut).
I don't understand the problem here. People mistakenly voted in the wrong place. The author blames this on the fact that the voter registration notices sent to voters did not have a polling address on them. Therefore, this is some how highly irregular, and highly suspect.
I call no way. It is every citizens responsibility to make sure they execute a valid, legal vote to the degree which they are physically able. How is this evidence of anything?
She also contradicts herself:
At the end of the day, we waited until the pollworkers posted Presidential vote results on the precinct door. In an area that was expected to vote heavily Democratic, Kerry only had a plurality of 12 votes. Thus I remain extremely concerned about the integrity of the touchscreen voting machines used there, and the overall election results on a national basis.
She distrusts the votes because Kerry was suppsoed to win the precinct by a much larger margin? What? Hello? So the voters don't agree with this activist and suddenly the results of the election are in question? And because her pricinct does not conform to what she wanted to see happen the whole election is in question by extrpolation?
It's ironic, since a paragraph before she writes that some democratic citiznes were called 16 times in a three day period, and this "may" have caused resentment and effected the outcome of the vote. 16 times in three days! Good gracious!
But how many erronious votes don't we know about? tink about it!
Read the report:
Total Registration 729,575
Total Turnout 547,340 75.02%
Election Day Turnout 404,666 55.47%
Absentee Turnout 141,633 19.41%
Provisional Turnout 1,041 0.14%
142,674 voted before election day.
No discrepancy -- no mystery -- no story
it is good to know to read!
These requirements have been set by the Federal Election Commission, which has always overseen our elections. The software has been reviewed, including at a source code level, as required by law by independent third parties.[1]
Personally, I'd prefer that the source be open for public inspection and that there be a voter-verified paper trail...
[1] http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/375954
Diebold strongly refutes the existence of any "back doors" or "hidden codes" in its GEMS software. These inaccurate allegations appear to stem from those not familiar with the product, misunderstanding the purpose of legitimate structures in the database. These structures are well documented and have been reviewed (including at a source code level) by independent testing authorities as required by federal election regulations.
In addition to the facts stated above, a paper and an electronic record of all cast ballots are retrieved from each individual voting machine following an election. The results from each individual machine are then tabulated, and thoroughly audited during the standard election canvass process. Once the audit is complete, the official winners are announced. Any alleged changes to a vote count in the election management software would be immediately discovered during this audit process, as this total would not match the true official total tabulated from each machine.
So whom are you going to fight? Just have a look here and ask yourself http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions can you fight anyone and do you have a chance of winning. In fact it is pretty amazing and admirable that Kerry got whatever he got in first place.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
proper link, pulled from a story I did on my jackwhispers website
Thank you. This is exactly what I think. We need to send out the message that election fraud _can not b e tolerated_. Period. The problem of course is that if you cheat, you win. And if you win, you get to make the agenda and so the agenda doesn't say a damn thing about stopping cheaters.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Evangelicals? Nah. I prefer to call 'em Fundies, as they are fundies, just like the wahlahs backing Bin Laden.
Moll.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Why can't they go for a simple (almost) foolproof method, like we have in the UK: You take a pen and put a cross in the square of the candidate you wish to vote for. That way you can't blame the machinery, and if you want to blame the counters, all they have to do is count them again.
I wish to remain anomalous
I dont tell the exit pollers who I voted for
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The ~4000 wrong votes are only the VERIFIED ones, people are doing statistical analysis of the availble data this very moment, but the problem is that it seems hard to get the data...e.g it has been verified that cnn altered the exit polls data, this was noted by people by accident (there are screen shots - prob possible to check SERPs cache as well), read more at www.whatreallyhappened.com
What makes you think so? For all we know, Bush might think they're all crackpots. But it certainly didn't stop him from courting them to get their votes.
I mean, Kerry went goose hunting to appeal to the hick vote. Do you think he actually gives a shit about hunters? The guy's a Democrat!
I'd be very, very surprised if Bush actually pays any attention to the evangelicals. They were nothing but a tool to get him re-elected, that's all. And as they realize how they've been used, I'll be laughing my ass off.
I love it. How can any techie approve of these machines, my root kit on your machine tells you I'm not logged in, but regardless of that fact, I am. Machines don't lie afterall and there is no fraud here /me waves hand like jedi. These aren't the votes your looking for...
4000 votes in a county with 628 registered voters.
How many counties do you have to rig like that to get 136.000 votes?
Most of Florida doesn't have open primaries, like where I live (Alachua County Florida). The counties are liberal enough that the Republican party won't run a candidate in most local elections, but if you register Republican you can't vote in a Democratic primary.
So in those counties, with closed primaries, many Republican register as a Democrat vote for the most conservative Democrat in the primares, but then vote Republican when they can (like in a Presidential Election). This is a way for Republicans to push toward more conservative candidates.
This has been going on so long, that many Republican candidates will often run as conservative Democrats just to have a chance to win.
your post says that electronics and computers should not take away from democratic order, yet your signature consists of one of the most well-known video game cheats.
For the tone you take in this comment it sounds like you're a real expert on all of this. Unfortunately, you missed a very important fact. Bush did *not* win the election in 2000. He got a minority of the votes. Florida's top election official, Katherine Harris, illegally stopped the recount in her state (which was already awash with illegal voter purging, something to which she was later forced to admit in court vs the NAACP) and declared Bush the winner of Florida. Subsequently, Bush was *appointed* President of the United States by an unprecedented ruling of the Supreme Court, one which included the sentiment "this ruling applies only to this specific election, and will never be used as a precedent for future elections." Now that's weirdness.
It was only four years ago; I'm surprised how easily people like you forget.
c:10: error: `turnSandwich' undeclared (first use in this function)
I've never heard of a Republican hacker. Ever. All the hackers I know are liberals.
I still can't believe how many people think that the election was rigged. There's a more reasonable explanation... We gave contracts to idiot companies whose software was crap. From what I've heard about the programming on some of these voting machines, we would have been better off using Cyrix 6x86-based PCs running Windows ME and using AOL to email the votes to their destination.
Your guy lost. Your reported anomilies aren't going to change that. Get over it
Not the point. Anomalies must be accounted for in any system and proven to not be part of a larger problem in the system. Nobody is trying to dethrone Emperor Bush. Would you still be happy if he HAD been elected because of such an anomaly and not by a fair vote? Your answer to that question better not be "Yes."
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Democrats in denial continue to try and find anything they can lay their hot little hands on to destroy George W. Bush. All rumors, unsubstantiated gossip, and half-baked "truths" will be trumpted to the highest in the hopes that some of it, no matter how ludicrous or absurd, will somehow stick to the President.
One wonders just how much scrutiny the voting system would be under if Kerry had won. One further wonders if this story would've even made it to Slashdot had it been the Republicans complaining about voting irregularities.
Bush won. Kerry lost. Get over it and start planning the next election. Perhaps next time you'll pick a better candidate. I would've voted for Lieberman had you nominated him, but you chose a left-wing flip-flop instead.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You are right. The outcome of the election will never be changed. Of course, the votes haven't been counted yet...not the votes that count.
The electors vote on Dec. 13, with votes due in by Dec. 22. The votes are counted on Jan 6, and then we know who will take the oath of office on Jan. 20.
Any speculation on the outcome until then is presumption. Well founded presumption, but presumption none the less.
Well there was an election four years ago where a candidate won the popular vote but didnt win the electoral vote, why should this year be any different? Actually if Kerry wins Ohio OR Florida, he is the new president and we would see a candidate who had less 3.5 MILLION votes and still become president. Then we could hear the Republicans screaming for four years how the electoral college MUST be abolished. Which it should, and that new issue of Wired with the cool CD has a great piece on competing voting schemes!
...and it should be known by now
Who says the votes were in Kerry's favor? The link you pointed doesn't even mention it at all.
This is a non-issue that Drudge invented, anyway. The machines hadn't been reset from the year previous; so someone reset them that morning as they were setting up which is why they check the things in the first place. Drudge reported this as "Machine reports extra votes!!!" and implied that it must have been a boon to Kerry, but there's no evidence that was the case.
In the past these thousands were not much noticed in a country with 250 million people... maybe once in a while you'd see a weirdo on a street corner passing out flyers while normal people tried to avoid him, and that was about it. But now the internet has given these kooks a platform from which to be more visible.
I come to Slashdot for cutting edge technology news and some comedy now and then. I'd hate to see it become a platform for fringe lunatics and conpiracy theorists.
Listen up.
I have news for you. Elections in this country have never, never, ever been "perfect". I agree they should be, but this type of questioning after the fact isn't all that new, or special.
Close elections happen every year. The nation is more evenly divided now than ever, which is making it seem like a big deal. It's not.
There is no hijacking going on. The real story is that semi-independent groups all over the country setup before the election with the specific intent of finding reasons to question the election if and only if it did not go there way. There were a ton of groups ready to swoop in and challenge result they didnt agree with.
That's the true story here. These types of actions are reprehensible.
Voting equipment today is just about as good as it has ever been in the country's history. There are several bills in Congress that will require all systems to have a standardized requirement and verification trail.
The electronic systems that are out there now are 100 times more verifiable than most princints in the country. Some of which are operated out of the homes and living rooms of citizens. Despite their flaws, systems that are recently installed and used are less like to cause spoilage, easier to use, easier to maintain, and easier to operate by poll workers.
do you mean http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ or http://www.blackboxvoting.com/?
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
No it wouldn't. It WAS NOT A POPULAR ELECTION. Everyone knows that. The popular count has NO effect on who has the moral right to lead this country.
-1 Troll, -1 Flamebait
the whois record is gone too...
"Even Kerry admitted those 150,000 provisional ballots wouldn't help."
but is he right? Concession just means he doesn't dispute it. The votes still determine the winner.
If ballots were disputed by one party predominately, then maybe the provisionals are predominately for the other candidate. And the number of provisionals is greater than the vote difference. (In Ohio, we're speaking of here.)
Just count the votes.
...and I'm not a closet anything, but thanks for your genuine concern.
It's the responsibility of the government and municipalities to demand hardware that provides what they need (i.e., a paper audit trail). No e-voting vendor is going to refuse to build something that municipalities will buy.
But they haven't gone down that road because the whole purpose of e-voting was to eliminate paper ballots, and all the headaches (spoilage, recounts, disenfranchisement via old/malfunctioning mechanical equipment, etc.) that go along with them.
How is it that we can build reliable, accountable systems to handle power, money, and everything else in our society, but somehow it's fundamentally impossible to expect that it could be done with voting. As I've said, I AGREE that we should have a paper trail: but it was NOT part of the specs for designs presented to e-voting vendors. All three of the e-voting vendors already have the capability to add individual receipt printing capability. The onus is TOTALLY on the municipalities to get it, and there should be blanket federal legislation requiring it.
Tin Futures are available on the London Metal Exchange (LME), here.
No, the hole is there, it's just that people choose not to see it. They get hurricanes, that in and of itself is par for the course in Florida. However, the frequency has been going up, possibly climatic change, and Bush isn't doing anything to stop that. What he IS doing is giving them federal aid.
Playing parent again. Which is the one thing he's done consistently well with his first term in office.
He's there to make it so the people don't need to worry or think, because he's strong and he'll take care of them. Or so they think, and he'd like them to think...
I think it's a great way to get votes from dumb voters who don't know how to take care of themselves.
I just read the Newsday article you linked to and didn't see a discussion of Pennsylvania voting problems in Kerry's favor. Are you perhaps making shit up now?
Let's get ready to RUUUUUMMMMMBLE!
And when your signed int overflows at 32,768, it starts counting backwards... sounds familiar...
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
Bush DID do so well in Florida because of the hurricanes. In fact, I think it was all a political ploy. He had the CIA use its weather machine to send the hurricanes to Florida, so he'd have a way to gain political clout here.
OK all you majority of /.'ers who voted: shutup already!
/.'ers who is a military leader in the U.S. military or a politician of some sort you are the ones who can make a much more well informed decision about how to lead this country than can I or 99.5% of the /. population.
I skipped voting this year for just this reason. Everyone wants everyone else to go out and vote because "you're vote makes a difference!" or "let's make a change for America!" To that I say: Yay! I stole votes, yay!
Voting in this country DOES NOT make you (much) of a voice in government. Elections get rigged, votes get miscounted. Get over the fact that your candidate lost/won already! Voting DOES make you tied into (psychologically) one side or the other in this country. That DOES NOT mean that you know how to run a country, what issues are truly most important for our country to deal with (or how to deal with them), nor how to conduct military operations to deter terrorism or other threats to our sovereignty. Those are for specialists in those areas to decide, ultimately. Therefore, if you are one of the slim minority of
Our "founding fathers" were clearly not idiots and designed the Constitution and all other facets of our government to keep the kind of decision making power that our President, Congress, Senate, and judiciary wield in the hands of those capable of making such decisions in an informed (albeit not always unselfish) manner.
Wonder why Congressmen and women and Senators usually get to stay in Congress and the Senate for more than just one term? It takes time to learn how to lead a country, and once you've been in that role for your first few years you're already 10x more qualified than any other candidate in your home state to fulfill that role, whether you're all that good at it or not. It's the experience that counts most, and I think the majority of voters vote that way out of sheer laziness. "He/She is a recognizable name to me and I don't hate them so they're probably most qualified for the position, vote!" The battle for the Presidency is usually just a battle between who's got the most experience and the most power through their many years of service in political leadership roles. Do any of us honestly think that Kerry or Bush is necessarily the *BEST* leader in the country? I doubt it. Was John Kerry that politically powerful or well-known prior to this election? NO! Hillary Clinton is well-known and powerful, this new Barak Obama guy will be eventually be there... Kerry was just a fill in for a Democratic candidate this time around. Wait until 2008! What a battle of politically powerful people that's gonna be! LOL
So get over yourselves about the fucking election. The decision was made years ago about who would get elected this time around, and it wasn't really the American general public that made such a decision. If Kerry would've actually gotten elected it would've been a nice bonus, but I don't think the powers that be in the Democratic camp actually expected it to happen.
This all being said, I agree with you: I don't think wide-spread electronic fraud stole the election. I do, however, see very severe problems & think that people across the political spectrum have a right to be concerned about elections in this country.
...and a Libertarian president didn't have a chance in hell anyway. But that's far from the point.
The election process needs to be unified, accountable and auditable.
Right now it's WAY too screwed up and Election Reform should be dealt with by the Bush administration since he won't be up for re-election next term anyway... that is unless he's got any more relatives planning to run..? Jeb? Gonna run? (Shhh! Damnit... don't wanna give'm any ideas)
The Electoral College system was built so that we could have an easier time with votes because we weren't all modern and digital. Well now we are and I don't think the EC needs to exist. (I expect arguments... go ahead, I'm listening -- I might be wrong) We have very adequate comunications to the point that we can depend solely on popular votes now. Then your vote really DOES matter. Further more, I am sick of the notion of winning a state and getting 30+ electoral votes even if the election for a particular state was really frikken close. So even if we kept the EC system, the notion of winning an entire state is ridiculous.
And as far as finding "only minor flaws" and that's not enough reason to do anything about it is ridiculous. If people are going to be told their vote counts, then it should mean something. Right now, your vote counts only if the laws in your state requires the person casting the EC vote to reflect the popular vote for his district and IF there are no anomalies.
We are WAY too modern and developed a nation to not have a fast, first-class election system in place. All the needed technology is available to make it happen. We need to reform our election process to ensure there is no more wriggle room for "anomalies." The people whose votes are supposed to matter deserve no less.
Okay, so maybe the real question is, does the narrow margin of victory achieved by the Neoconservatives - by myriad forms of deception - amount to a "mandate" to continue their bizarre and destructive policies?
As far as I can tell, all Bush did was push us into to Iraq, set up a bunch of high-paid defense companies, and funnel taxpayer money through Halliburton, etc., right back into his campaign.
Meanwhile apparently they've loosened restrictions on companies that do business with terrorist nations, and received more donations from those companies than any others.
How can such a transparent policy of bait-and-switch continue to work generation after generation?
They cry out "we are moral!" and yet they do nothing except promote their own entrenched economic and military power.
Frankly, if the whole point of the USA is now simply to promote its own survival and prosperity, maybe it should leave the Earth. Our prosperity and supposed generosity of spirit doesn't mean shit if it is not translated into action.
Obviously, I think the action taken in Iraq is stupid. The place was under a stranglehold already, millions of children dying under the auspices of our "power."
Common people around the world are getting a little sick of the USA using its power to kill more liberally than its power to give aid - in direct opposition to the world's interests and its own.
Ordinary US citizens are getting sick of a kowtowing media that exists to simultaneously feed our narcissism and play to our susceptibilities through overblown hyperbole and emotionally-potent oversimplifications.
CNN, Fox News... You know. The agenda-setting media. The makers of history.
The election results and polling of non-partisan voter attitudes shows that more than 60% of American adults are actively concerned about issues like black-box voting, pollution, global warming, education, social welfare...
That surely stands as more of a mandate than banning gay marriage and establishing military outposts all over the Middle East.
.
-- thinkyhead software and media
What if the difference in Ohio had been 3000 votes in favor of Bush? Then the missing 4000 Kerry would have changed the result.
This issue really is that the voting machines need to be fixed before the next election. You can't always expect one party to win clearly, you may need every single vote.
But doesn't it seem to anyone else that a secure program to record a couple of true/false statements for a bunch of people, and then have a method of confirming it should be pretty simple to make and implement?
WHY THE HELL IS THERE EVEN ANY PROBLEMS WITH THIS?!?!?!?!
I apologize for the caps, but as a US Citizen who has had it up to HERE, I needed to vent.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Wonderful! Someone has finally realized the truth. Bush used his secret Hurrican machine to rig the election.
Things like that just don't happen.
The owls are not what they seem
Simple.. When you are electing the leader of your country have ONE issue being voted on. Then have the entire voting system controlled by one central agency and make a simple paper ballot:
o n= yth&dir=res/stu/gui&document=res_stu_guide_8&lang= e&textonly=false
http://www.elections.ca/content_youth.asp?secti
Some jurisdictions routinely recount a handful of random precincts and/or routinely recount a random sample of ballots from many precincts.
You can't do this on the no-paper-trail e-voting machines, but you can do it on the optical-scan and other paper systems.
If the recount is done on equipment that's NOT the same as the original counting equipment, and the whole process is watched by observers from both parties, it'll be darn hard ot pull off shennanigans like tampering with central-counting-machines.
By the way, in ANY national election, I'd expect a few statistical anomolies when you compare exit polls to actual results. I am intrigued by some of the patterns in the anomolies. I hope these get investigated further.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Perhaps the writer is too young to remember Hizzonner Richard J. Daley, the Mayor of Chicago from 1955 to 1976 (he died in office. His son was also later mayor). Chicago voted the way Hozzonner wanted it to vote, which was Democratic, the will of the voters notwithstanding. The most common type of voter fraud observed was paying homeless and jobless to go from polling station to polling station and voting as someone else who was either dead or fraudulently enrolled. Other types were often alledged, but usually at great risk to one's health and safety.
Daley was perhaps the most notorious in this area. Other big cities were similarly corrupt, however. I suggest you go look at how the big cities have voted in the last century.
You may also not remember that many of the older deep south Republicans (think Poll Tax) started out as Democrats. Kennedy and Johnson caused them to break with the party.
Fraudulent voting by _both_ parties isn't that far back in the past; more senior members on both sides well remember how it was done, and what to look for to prevent the other side from getting away with such fraud.
I'm amazed, Kerry did the right thing!
He knew there would be problems with the election results but he conceeded gracefully in order to restore some measure of Unity.
There is of course another method of assuring fairness it's called impeachment. However Bush will deny any involvement with the people who stuffed ballots.
And the republicans control the courts...
Well we'll wait and see.
obviously, it is his fault.. ;)
;)
water to wine, kerry to bush votes..
yea.. America calls Muslims fanatical..
bah
whatever, none of this will matter as Kerry has already given it up..
For fun, just look at the states which voted for kerry, and the ones who were attacked or targeted (i.e. golden gate bridge) on 9/11.. Being targeted for terrorism kind of makes you want to get rid of our fanatical religious leader who,at this moment , is probably trying to figure out when the rapture will be and how best to get armageddon going to get it over with.
So, get over it, Kerry lost because somehow the country went on a religious frenzy and elected a clearly "fanatical religious leader" who has since said that "god" wanted him in office..
Karl Rove wasn't behind your voting both changing your vote.. blame Jesus
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
If you look at bastion of fairness, moderation, and level headed debate that is politics.slashdot.org and look down about 9 stories you will see that the "Kerry Concedes Election To Bush" story got 4961 comments. HOWEVER, if you dig deeper you will see that there are in fact 5620 Comments as of the time of this post. This is obviously a ploy by our "Evil Republican"(tm) Slashcode maintainer and moderator Pudge to quell the liberal outcry(AKA whiney trolls).
This simply cannot stand, we should have verified commenting with paper printouts that can be recounted manually if necessary.
Slashcode 3 for '08!
If Kerry wins Ohio, we have a tie of the electoral college. In that event, the people no longer have a vote for the president, it falls to the House of Representitives.
The cited article does not say the Pennsylvania voting problems went in Kerry's favor.
A short is 2 bytes.
"I come to Slashdot for cutting edge technology news and some comedy now and then."
What's the frequency now, Kenneth?
We need as a matter of reform to standardize the method of voting used within the country. Every town in every county, in every state should use the same machine, with the same formated card. In the future I would like to see a secure system that utilizes the magnetic strip on the back of your license, in concert with a pin number, or your SSN as a system for making sure people are voting only once.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
I almost jumped out of my body when I read "Weirdness", "Dreams", "Optically", "Anomaly" and "Votes".
Me too. These are complex multi-sylleble words, yet none of them were spelled wrong!
100% Precincts Reporting
D John F. Kerry 21,114 50%
R George W. Bush 20,916 49%
L Michael Badnarik 552 1%
Looks like they can count above 22,200
This story should be modded -- Fiction
I would consider this a practice run for things to come. Notice that it's only the smaller counties, where totals wouldn't be too large to get big media attention. /me digs tinfoil hat from bottom of closet..
what is being alleged is that the E-voting machines are buggy at best, registering obvious erros with no paper trail to offer an alternative counting method.
;-)
Show of hands. Who knows what an op-scan ballot is?
We used them in my county. You take a black marker and fill in the little ovals on a paper ballot and feed it into a black scanner/ballot box. There is no paper trail? Well, there is the paper ballot.... This doesn't qualify how?
I am not sure what is going on here, but it is strange. It could be related to limits bugs (as in the 32k backwards counting bug in one of the articles). Overrun bugs are not uncommon in software, so the fact that three different manufacturers have similar bugs would not surprise me at all....
Oh no! A buffer overrun election software! Perhaps this would justify a manual recount in Florida just for the record
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Laporte is in Indiana, and Indiana has gone republican for the last 30 years in every pres election. Even so, the loss of 50k votes is disturbing, but not as disturbing as it would be in a state that was much closer (michigan).
Please correct the summary.
Did you guys hear that some 20 plus vans that were to be used to shuttle voters to the polls in Milwaukee had multiple tires slashed?
Oh wait...most of you would probably CHEER for it because the vans were rented by GOPers and the parties being sought for "interview" include offspring of two prominent local democrats...
Let me expand a bit on what I said before.
The referendum in Venezuela happened a few months before the US eletion, and it was also the first widespread use of electronic voting in that country, so it makes for a good comparison. (Wikipedia background on the referendum here, think of it just like an election).
The Venezuelan voting process used thumbprints for verification of voters, had heavy international monitors, used voting machines which source code was open and reviewed by thousands of programmers months before the election, and had no less than three paper trails (one which was given to the Carter center, one given to the election board, the other kept for verification purposes). The process of the electronic voting machines was highly scrutinized and available on the web for months for review by anyone interested (in fact, the website is still up right here on the company's website). Diebold did none of this. The source code was not presented for review. The process was highly unknown and obscure. There were no paper trails.
In the end, Chavez won by 18 percentage points, verified by both the voting comission as well as by the Carter center. The process was standardized and each ballot looked the same and each voter was given the same experience. Exit polls matched, roughly, the actual results. If there had been even HALF the problems in Venezuela that the US has seen, the opposition in Venezeula would NEVER have accepted the results. They would have demanded another election. If 4000 votes were put for Chavez that didnt really exist, the opposition would go crazy. And thats with an EIGHTEEN PERCENTAGE POINT win.
Bush, on the other hand, won by 2 percentage points. TWO percentage points. There were no paper trails. The voting process was NOT standardized. The exit polls did NOT match the final results. Then all these problems arise. And you say "well, he still won by more votes than those which got messed up."
The point is that the voting should be perfect. Why can venezuela do it and the US cant? EASY-- because the venezuelan opposition puts pressure and refuses to accept the results ANY OTHER WAY. Its not that anyone refutes that George Bush got more votes. However, just because it doesnt matter in THIS election doesnt mean it shouldnt be heavily scrutinized and fixed before next election.
Remember, in an election you have to fix things before its a problem. Or else you get a President elected who didnt really win the election (a la Bush in 2000)
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Turd Sandwich is Bush, Giant Douche is Kerry. Kyle is a more likely Kerry voter, and Cartman is definitely a republican.
Of course, he did say a vote for Turd Sandwich is "a vote for change."
great, but the article is on election results IN FLORIDA.
Er, no... almost every other (non-corrupt) country manages to have extremely accurate elections. Now, and in the past. Using such technologies as paper. Oh, and some of them are bigger than the US of A, and have more people.
Because a way of cheating the results could be follow the approx distribution of previous election + a random value adjusted to the levels of actual, registered voters.
Ok, this objection could not have statistical meaning, nor means that because after existed a "proof" that things were fair, before the cheat was done specifically with that proof as target. But as I said, have very little knowledge on this topics.
Florida also added the bulk of 330,000 jobs in October, mostly in construction.
Kerry is running around Florida talking about the crappy economy when all of the sudden more people are working than have in months.
Throw onto that bin Laden's last minute tape, the desire not to change "horses midstream" and other issues like gay marriage, and a 3% margin isn't all that far fetched. Not to mention that Kerry hadn't been shown winning in a major national poll for quite some time, with the vast majority of all recent polls showing Bush winning a narrow victory.
Shouldn't we be blaming the person at the root of all of this????? It's clearly Bill Gate's fault that the electronic voting went haywire. Damn Windows 3.1 being used for electronic voting systems.
Hee...hee...ho....ho...
Okay...needed to inject some humor into this..
I proudly voted for Kerry in CA where we mark our ballots with ink dots now. If the President truly did cheat..it will come out. If he didn't then we'll...we're screwed either way right?
Thank you. Elections in *any* country have never been perfect. It's not going to happen.
Just because the observed votes don't match up to party aligment doesn't mean a thing. Some republicans voted democrat and some deomcrats voted republican. It happens every election. It's generally decided by which party has the most detractors. It would make sense that, since bush won Florida, he had the votes of registered democrats as well as republicans.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
But they won't realize they've been used. It was announced that Bush will again be bringing up a federal marriage amendment. It will likely fail as strongly as it did last time, but to the evangelicals, that's not the point. They get off on symbolic victories. The mere fact that a President would push such an amendment is enough for them to believe that their interests are being kept in mind.
It's more about perception than reality with these folks (and with Republicans in general, as indicated by the PIPA report). If they perceive their agenda is being met, then they're happy.
Yeah, at some point this fails to work. My guess is that it takes about 35ish years-- that's the amount of time that some have suggested that the balance of power cyclically shifts between Democrats and Republicans. It probably takes that long before party members-- of either party-- realize they've been shafted.
Really.... hmmmm ok so 256 (what Kery got officially) plus 20 (Ohio's electoral vote count) equals..... 269!!!!!!! OF COURSE. Thanks for pointing that out.
...and it should be known by now
Don't be stupid.
Even if Bush shut down all economic activity in the US and wiped out all CO2 producing machinery, it would have made exactly NO DIFFERENCE.
I can't believe you're blaming Bush for hurricanes now. That's just intellectually pathetic.
Referring to anyone as "the kind of people" makes you look like a douchebag. You are the tart cart conspiracy theorist talking about the CEO of Diebold. Go get a new tin foil hat and learn to lose with some dignity. People who vote republican are bourgeois who cannot accept defeat, so they do not hesitate to cheat in order to win.
"An-o-ma-ly".
Couldn't stand it.
...generally making both parties appear far more unappealing than they already are.
That's possible?
No your not the only one, the theory that Bush caused the Florida hurricanes is obviously very flawed 'thinking' and not even close to logic. Mycrfot
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
If 4000 votes were off, isn't there a chance that there are other errors that are not known about?
On the other hand, I've been hearing stories about this for a few days. Only the 4,000, Ohio vote story has made it into any major media outlets (as far as I can tell). If the other stories had any credibility, why wouldn't this be on the "top of the hour" with CNN? I'm not saying that there weren't some errors, but if this was as wide spread as some of the stories lead you to believe...why isn't this a bigger deal?
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Well, the machines in Ft Lauderdale which were counting backwards after the 32,767th voter (ok, the article said 32,000, but damnit, I know 16-bit binary hitting twos-complement zone when I see it) since nobody knows how often these machines rolled over, there could easily be millions of spare votes for Kerry AND Bush that will never be recorded.
And since Diebold CEO said he'd deliver votes to Bush- well, that's all the doubt you need about the RECORDED votes- provisional ballots be damned.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Regarding these counties that have mostly Democratic registration, and mostly went for Bush.
These are rural counties, and they are small counties. Baker borders Georgia on the northern edge of Florida. Rural means conservative. Small means the folks that live there have probably lived there a very, very long time. What does this mean?
It means Dixiecrat. Like Strom Thurmond. They are Bush's "base". They've been Democrat for years and have just never bothered to change their registrations.
And plus.... come on. Say you've got a county of 12,000 voters that is mostly Democratic. Are you really going to tip your hand by by flipping almost ALL of them to your guy? Isn't part of the aim of fraud to not get caught? People would catch it so fast.
Finally, I did a study that proved that Bush had more electoral support, and that the election result is in line with that. Check it out.
And by the way, I am a true-blue Democrat. If you doubt my credibility, you can read through the rest of my weblog.
skkkoooonnnggggkkk ptui
That was the error in a single precinct.
However, if just one such error occured in each of Ohio's counties (88) then Bush would have 350K extra votes.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Besides, the whole point of the E.C. was because the American public is too uninformed and too easily swayed to be trusted to elect the President. This election has done much to convince me that they may very well have been right.
To quote Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, "It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations."
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Virutally all doubt could be removed if we simply got rid of the annonymous part. If a voter could verify after the fact his/her vote was indeed included for the correct person we wouldn't have these insane problems not to mention my doubt about the validity of any of these voting machines.
Ok, sorry this is important, that typo is not 256 but 252
...and it should be known by now
I wish I could agree with your sentiment. But the Bush Administration has consistently shown that it has only two masters: corporations and biblethumpers. This Administration has consistently used all available machinery of the Federal Government to support the extension of the control religious institutions already weild into virtually every area of our lives. Don't like the fact that your tax dollars are going to support religious schools, too bad, work harder until you're in a tax bracket Bush thinks shouldn't be taxed (namely, his). Don't like the fact that your tax dollars are going to support religious organizations attempting to convert captive audiences under the guise of "faith-based" social welfare initiatives, too bad, Bush has a "mandate" from those fundamentalist wackos. I've never been one to think that the First Amendment should prevent any miscegenation between church and state, but that idea is looking more and more appealing as sectarian forces gain significantly more influence over the machinery of government.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Alright lefties, you're going to try this again?
Which outcome exactly are you hoping for?
Look at the polls and results where favorable mistakes happened for Kerry. Are they only in states with few electoral votes, or already assured of a Kerry win?
I mean, c'mon. All you need to ask yourself is one question.
What Would Karl Rove Do?
(Other than eat gay babies)
read what i wrote here.
Basically, it is unimportant whether the election outcome is changed or not. What matters is that the kerry supporters put enough pressure on the election comittees to fix the system to the point that these "mistakes" wont happen anymore. What if next election is as close as 2000 was, and 4000 votes get miscounted? Then it WILL matter.
Its up to the opposition to keep up the pressure, whether or not it matters THIS time. Because if you just accept that "oh it didnt matter this time," then the problems will never get fixed.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Vote early, vote often.
How is it that Democracy in America is being hijacked, and you don't seem to give a shit?
:) Didn't even Kerry tell you guys to cope for 4 years?
For the nTH time this is not a democracy.
It is a representive republic.
The founders said as many bad things about democracys as they did having a king.
Please try to get it straight. It is a big differance.
My bet is they don't think there is anything being hijacked. But the loosers usually tend to claim that something is rigged when they loose.
And more stable growen up people tend to take the attitude of you lost cope.
I'd wager you are the true anti-Americans.
Name calling
The members of the electoral college are under no law that controls their vote. If they are moral people and belive that the election process was the result of fraud in their state they could always abstain or split their votes.
People cry foul because of old, broken, or malfunctioning mechanical/paper voting systems.
Congress passes a law setting uniform, consistent standards for voting systems in all jurisdictions, such that they meet certain requirements, and ensure that ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions have access to very similar equipment and voting methods.
Naturally, it being the 21st century, we decided to go with - *gasp* - electronic systems. Since we use computer and electronic systems to manage our entire society, including its money, this wasn't that far fetched of an idea.
Paper audit trails were never made mandatory. And most municipalities don't even want them, because it adds another layer of complexity to a system that, ironically, was supposed to make things easier.
But no matter what, you can't win. Someone will cry foul on every side of the argument, and even though HAVA was designed to address the EXACT concerns of poor precincts in the 2000 election, now it's getting crucified for other reasons.
The HAVA amendment to add a paper trail is what we need to pass. But even if that happens, people will still complain about voter intimidation, or how it's not fair that someone who's been on God's green earth for over 18 years is disenfranchised because they haven't been able to find out where their polling place is in the four years since the last presidential election.
Logic? In politic? is a 3-way hole. Politics are unlogic, logic is against most what is done by politics, and the last one is you wanting to mix both and getting surprised because they dont mix at all.
Theocracy? You have never left the US have you, most likly never stepped down out of your ivory towered blue state. You want to see a theocracy go to Iran, tell me then talk about how the US is so horriable. Basic human rights go to china and try speaking this ill of the governement, or better yet try being a neighbor to China who thinks they have some right to your land ala taiwan. No my friend you want to know why the left is loosing, its the exteramist view of america that the democrats are screaching about. When you cry the sky is falling, and I look up and see just a little rain but sunshine on the horizon I want to listen no more of your spiel. Sure I disagree with the evangielicals, I think their blief system is silly yet cute in how they subscribe blindly to a book written on behalf of king james, but are they the real problem? Their only real probem is the abortion issue, which slips into stem cell research and other issues. Take that out and its hard to find fault with them. Its rather like the morons whako cristian cult sure, but they arnt hurting me and arnt likly to. Bush one on the charecter issue, love him or hate him he belives one thing and generally sticks with it. Kerry had 'nuanced opionons' which not even people of his party or campanign could explain day to day. Sounding like you telling everyone what they want to hear makes you look like your full of bullshit. A east coast libreal hasnt been president since Kenndy, and he wasnt that liberal. Kerry was an also ran to replace Dean who would have lost several states and creatored the democratic party, kerry was someone to lose not so badly. Until the democrats can get canidate that can not be laughed out of the south and midwest they are going to conintue the loose.
Probably because no one is looking.
...isn't it, but YES, the vote was hacked!
It's called 3.5 million voters deciding to vote for Bush -- and not for Kerry.
I know it's almost inconcievable that the people would choose Bush over Kerry, but look at the slashdot polls. Think about it, the people who are most likely to have hacking skills aren't the conservative republicans: they're the liberal, slashdot/techie crowd.
So, if there was any hacking going on, it's just as fair to assume that the liberals techs were fiddling with the count just as much as the conservative techs. Maybe it's time to call every past election that relied on this equipment into question.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. -- George Orwell
For a group that jumps all over people that have religious beliefs that can't be proven, you guys are ready to believe any wild theory about Republicans "stealing" elections at the drop of a hat. As one of your favorite PACs puts it: Move on!
Ah the vote count is irrelevant. It's virtually all noise with no signal.
And it's all because of the multiple choice ballot. People go in there and pick red or blue. So when someone with no real clue goes in, he does eenie-meenie-miney-moe, and chalks up another in the Kerry or Bush column. Pure noise. All the "get out the vote" drives just serve to amplify the noise. People who think they have to vote "the lesser of two evils" just amplify the noise. Not liking Bush is not the same as supporting Kerry. Polls seemed to show that most of Americans didn't like either of them.
So now I'm supposed to believe 52% of Americans want Bush as president? I don't. I believe he won, but his mandate isn't that strong. The fact that most ballots present you with two choices makes the result pure noise.
With a write-in ballot, like the country used to use, we would see some numbers that accurately reflect the american voters. When someone clueless goes in and doesn't take it seriously, he writes in "Pee Wee Herman", and we can easily identify it as noise, and ignore it.
Then we'd see some meaningful stats as the result of the election. We'd probably see GWB at 20%, Kerry at maybe 15%, and all of these third partie guys at 10% or lower. Bush still goes to the White House, but there's no "52% of America is behind him" falsities behind it. Those numbers are completely made up, but I'm sure thats how an election would look. That's how they look in every other democracy that doesn't buy into this two-party crap.
What I'm getting at is, it's not a two party system, but you combine the multiple choice ballot with rules to make it nigh-impossible for anyone else to get on the ballot, mix it up with the current debate formats - which are openly set up to exclude any third parties, and you have a recipe for meaningless bullshit joke of an election.
So who cares if the machines work or not. Flipping a fucking coin would just as adequately represent the will of the american people. Bush/Kerry/Clinton whatever. Many, if not most, are sick of the same old party lines and stump speeches.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
He had masters. Now that the election's over and it's his last term, why should he have any master at all? He has the Congress in grip, and nothing to fear.
We can't accept the fact that Kerry lost... by 3.5 million votes.
Kerry did not lose by 3.5 million votes.
Kerry lost by ~140,000 votes -- Bush's winning margin (at the moment) in Ohio.
The popular vote means nothing. The electoral college is all.
Provisional ballots have not yet been counted in Ohio, to the final figure will differ from the above.
Nothing will come of accusations of election fraud, errors, etc. Even if there is incontrovertible evidence that it happened. Why? Because most of the country doesn't want to believe that these things could happen in America. It's just like when a teacher tells a mother her son misbehaved in class and the mother replies, "Never! Not my sweet little angel!" Most Americans will assume that America is immune to election fraud because America is the world's greatest democracy, just like they were taught in fourth grade.
Whistleblowers: "Someone screwed with the election!"
American Public: "No way! This is America! Maybe it's like that in China but that could never happen here!"
What it means is that quality control procedures were badly flawed, the products were insufficiently tested, and at least some voting machines use signed 16-bit integers for their counters.
Nobody is claiming conspiracy. But a great many people are claiming slipshod development by computerized voting systems and a complete lack of contingency planning on the part of electoral officials.
One thing I can tell you right now, without even seeing a single line of code, is that not a single provider of voting machines (mechanical or digital) made even the remotest effort to comply with ISO 9000 standards on documentation or quality review. If they had, there would have been a thorough paper trail for every component, every patch release, etc. The fact that patches weren't installed and nobody knew who knew what shows a paper trail for development and deployment (ie: ISO 9000 compliance) did not exist.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Worst of all, most people aren't really happy with either candidate, and are really voting against the other one. Even though Bush got "the most votes ever", so did Kerry. And even though Bush got a little over half of the votes, that's hardly a mandate of the people, it's more a "eh...whatever" of the people. Almost as many people voted against Bush.
Heck, if Mr. Gates really wanted to he could buy his way into the presidency.
"If it wasn't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."
-Lewis Black
Sure there may be some election weirdnesses going on, but the bottom line at the end of the day is whether the voting can be verified or not. My own personal preferences are that all voting gets done on paper - it's verifiable, traceable (with serial numbers), and it's quite inexpensive to operate and run. It's worked well in the UK for years, and results can be pretty quick - polls can close at 9pm and have a result within a couple of hours for small areas in a mainly urban area. Rural areas can have a result by lunchtime the day after. The paper method is by far the most verifiable means of voting.
Optical scans are IMO the next best thing, because the voter made the marks on the ballot paper directly. If there is a discrepancy, then the votes could in theory be counted by hand. If the ballot is well designed then it could be counted by hand quickly; optical scanning just speeds up thee counting somewhat.
I have a big problem with touch screen voting that doesn't generate a print out. I believe that the voting is not intentionally rigged, but because these machines are designed to handle America's exceptionally complicated voting system, there's more chance for errors to creep in. You're usually voting on at least 3 federal elections, a dozen State elections, a couple of dozen county elections, and who knows how many municipal elections? Plus voting for judges, sherrif, and numerous referenda on local and state issues... it makes for an incredibly long and complex ballot. India can do electronic voting and do it error free, but that's because the equipment is incredibly simple and designed to vote for one race only.
Whatever you want to read into these irregularities, I do support recounts. This would be only to ensure that the vote was indeed accurate, and not to determine "whether the evil Diebold had rigged the election" - which is most likely untrue.
Mark.
Did any of you catch the open letter to Republicans? I noticed it on The Register today. Sure, the letter is flamebait, but it's funny flamebait. :)
Get your own free personal location tracker
examine the record. Both of your points of view are perfectly valid positions to take.
The optical scan questions can be answered with an examination of the ballots --no problem, one of you will be proven right.
Too bad the electronic machines did not actuall keep a record of the voters actions, like paper ballots do. They leave the issue almost unprovable.
You an say what you want about sour grapes... the number of issues on both sides stinks of an untrustworthy election.
Given the record of lies and manupulation our current administration has shown us, there is clearly reason to question the election results.
Blogging because I can...
OK, obviously there is systematic error here, not just random variation within the margin for error. I suspect the Hispanic vote may be a source of such error, as they tend to be reluctant to say whom they voted for. Do you have handy anywhere the discrepancy between California exit polls and the ballot counts? There's a large Hispanic population there, yet little incentive to try to rig electronic voting.
And if you don't think that adminitrative pressure to roll these machines out wasn't responsible for a lot of the problems we see with them then you're deluding yourself.
Diebold is spinning like a top to counter this kind of publicity. It's possible that this represents a legitimate change of heart there, but I really doubt it. I'll take thier past actions and thier documented behaviors under a lot more consideration than last minute claims made in the middle of a hail of bad publicity.
I guess the main question is whether or not these differences are enough to change the outcome. Even Kerry admitted those 150,000 provisional ballots wouldn't help.
No.
All anonmilies should be investigated, even the ones that don't have a chance of changing the outcome. If cheating is going on, then it should be stopped. No exceptions. Even if it's just stupidity and not malice, it should be stopped.
-- should you believe authority without question?
actually, after counting the provisional ballots that margin shrunk to about 30,000 votes. I'm not sure of this erroneous 4000 is in that margin or not but the State was far from a blow out.
If the situation were reversed you can be certain that the "republicans" would be crawling up the orrifice of anyone who ever got near to anyone who ever touched one of those voting machines and contesting every single vote in a last ditch effort to get their man in power.
I hate Bush. I really, really hate what he has done to America and what he is doing to the world.
However, given the way the Dems gave up this fight, one has to question whether they'd have the bottle for the battles they'd be facing on a national and international level. I'm doubting they would.
C'mon people just give it up...
I'm afraid it's going to have to get a lot worse before the revolution begins and heads start rolling. It always works this way, just read your history.
We can't accept the fact that Kerry lost... by 3.5 million votes.
You're right, it's been really hard to get over the fact that the worst president ever was backed by that many people. I've been incredulous all week.
However, Bush didn't win by 3.5 million votes. He lost by about 130,000 votes. If 131,000 more people voted for Kerry in Ohio - he would be our new president-elect. It is for this reason that we should be examining the voting mechanics errors, the number of which are approaching that winning margin. We learned this rather clearly 4 years ago, I'm surprised that you haven't... let me guess, you probably also believe that WMDs were found in Iraq and Saddam was behind 9/11?
Taco isn't saying that crackers were messing with the system. The story that I read from his headline was that the system is messed up enough as it is, and we aren't getting fair or accurate vote counts. We can't have a truly functioning democracy when so many people's votes aren't counted properly. I mean, how are we supposed to tell Afganistan and Iraq that we know how to run a country better than they do?
"It's not who votes that counts. It's who counts the votes." -- Joseph Stalin
- passion
Perhaps one should ask instead, Would Kerry still have lost if there were no problems with the votes and no fraud people speak of?
So you are blaming Bush because he, and his cabinet, are not stopping the weather.
You guys think of everything, except how to win.
Bush 286 Electoral Votes
51%
59,674,953
Kerry 252 Electoral Votes
48%
56,178,622
Or by who wins the most electoral votes, it's simply who is better at cheating. Currently, the Republicans are better. But in history past, the Democrats were quite good.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
A big complaintant of the whiners in this case have been people who thought all the newly registered democrats would vote democratic. They said: "registrations are up 3:1 Democrat versus Republican. Great. We'll get 3 new votes for everyone 1 they get".
When that doesn't happen, they get all whacked out. Ohh no they say! Some thing bad has happened.
What happened is that the new democratic vote never materialized. They didnt vote in the proportions they registered. And, on top of that, they didnt stick with the party they registered with. Just because you stop youth on the street and ask them to register and they check the democrat box does mean they are going to vote for Kerry.
U.S. Inspires World With Attempt At Democratic Election...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
How do you suppose that the Republicans could have faked "90% of every poll" showing Bush narrowly winning? We don't run all of the polls. Also, how did we add "over 3 million votes to Bushes [sic] totals?" You are just making up assertions with no justification whatsoever. In fact, you have almost the opposite of justification.
...if you vote Libertarian.
That's all we need... Fuel for the Gore lemmings and Kerry fanatics (oh, those poor, depressed souls!) to complain for the next four years about Bush stealing the election again.
Let the conspiracy theories commence.
Crap like this comes out, and people on Slashdot wonder why I think switching to something like IRV, at least until we get the modernization glitches worked out of our system now, is nothing shy of completely stupid.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
"Democrats supposedly experienced a -60% decline"
Is that the same as a 60% increase?
Hell no i'm not listening. Bush started out by declaring that he had a "broad victory" and "a very clear mandate from the American people." A 2% margin of victory is neither of those.
Now it's being made clear that he still believes in enforcing his view of morality on the entire nation: Rove: Bush Serious About Gay Marriage Ban
He has no actual intent to unite the nation. He's just been saying it for the PR value. Rove probably thinks that if they just shout loudly enough that they have a clear mandate and they want to work with the Democrats that anyone who disagrees won't be believed.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Oh, they're looking all right. Name the accusation, and the Bush team pushes for alternative examples to discredit the critic. The blogosphere goes nuts looking to discredit any critics. So the fact that a week has gone by and I've yet to hear of even one glitch that benefited Kerry, well it makes me wonder even more.
Don't forgot that the European observers were not allowed to enter some polling stations - somebody hiding something?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It is doubtful that the Electoral College will ever be abolished simply because historically the president was never selected by the people. In short the way that the Electoral College used to work was that the state congress would vote for what electors to send, and they would cast their vote for the next president. Over time this was changed so that the citizens of the state vote for the electors rather than the other way around.
In short what this means is that the president is not really a representative of the citizens of the country, but rather they are representatives of the states of the country. Your congressmen are in fact your direct representatives in the national government. The president is intended to act as a check and balance against the Congress.
Is all this leftie whining really worth the bandwidth?
YOU. LOST.
GET OVER IT.
No, I'm not "blaming" him. I think it's excellently performed manipulation of the voters to get votes. And I figure both sides are perfectly willing to play such games.
I didn't vote for either of them, and voted 3rd party.
I'm also not exactly sold, myself, on the idea that global warming is happening because of greenhouse gases. I look at the sheer amount of energy we use, and how thermodynamics says it must become waste heat, eventually, somewhere, and see that we're going to heat this place up by continuing to do work (in the physics sense of work).
you destroy faith in democracy by letting the simple truth get in the way, that might be too much for some people...
From the linked article: "In violation of federal law, some Pennsylvania and Maryland poll workers denied voters the right to cast a provisional ballot." It does not imply that this irregularity helped one candidate or the other in any way.
Correct me if I'm wrong (IANAL), but I thought that the election results haven't been decided yet. What's the deadline on states sending their electors to vote for the president? Oh, by the way, is it true that Kerry's concessions peech (or any concession speech) has no legal merit? That is, if for some reason X amount of votes in some states are DQ'd and Kerry goes ahead of Bush in the electoral count, is Kerry then the winner? (I know it won't happen, but let's pretend)
Let's see...
/. !).
... gave up more and more everyday for 4 fuggin' years and they still don't give a shiet Usama Bin Laden is alive and enjoying a new career in amateur video.
American votes aren't counted.
Americans can be "declared" criminals.
Americans can be jailed without legal.
Americans can be jailed indefinately.
American homes can be searched.
Americans electronically monitored.
American business' monitored. Oh yes!
American private communications monitored.
American travel restricted.
American finanaces can be "frozen".
American media is silent (except Slashdot... yea
Goddess help you if you're NOT American because America will keep murdering, torturing, disappearing, and shoting, anyone declared an "enemy combatant".
If your skin is brown you're automatically on a terrorist list.
America
Then they "voted" in Bush. Yea... like the last time Bush was "voted" in?
Well, there was a tiny little mention of Pennsylvania. It just said some voters were denied provisional ballots. No mention of what county, city, precinct or any other useful information. No mention of how many voters were turned away. No way to estimate if they were likely Kerry voters (i.e urban) or not. So no, the AC isn't quite making shit up, but neither is s/he providing anything we can check...
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
> For the nTH time this is not a democracy.
> It is a representive republic.
Then stop spreading quite so much "freedom and democracy" already.
not all the l33t crackers out there are Republicans.
You're probably right. Most of them that would tamper with an election, are Mercenary. Whichever side pays you, the money is worth just as much either way.
Maybe a lot of people -liked- what happened in the Bush administration.
This is my sig.
I heard a friend from Ohio complain that she waited for a kind of "confirmation" of her electronic vote, which most people did not have time to wait for. She voted democratic, but the confirmation came up for Bush ... the system made this mistake six times! It took hours! Can anyone from Ohio corroborate this scenario for us?
If the situation were reversed you can be certain that the "republicans" would be crawling up the orrifice of anyone who ever got near to anyone who ever touched one of those voting machines and contesting every single vote in a last ditch effort to get their man in power.
Bush narrowly lost many, many, many other states that he could have chosen to fight in. Also, the same with 2000. New Mexico in 2000 went to Gore by the tinest of margins.
It's just not true.
Its great that you hate Bush, but you are blinded by your own hate. I would have considered voting for Kerry had he told Michael Moore and George Soros to bugger off.
There is nothing to fight here. If Kerry did by some magical way get the electors from Ohio aftera a long court battle, and unseat Bush he'd be the most illegitimate President ever, and he'd probably end up impeached by the end of next year.
this type of questioning after the fact isn't all that new, or special
The question was going on long before the fact, in case you hadn't noticed. Blackboxvoting.org was specifically set up to contest the media hype surrounding the infallibility of electronic voting.
These types of actions are reprehensible.
How exactly were they supposed to swoop in before the fact? The voting companies were working with unproven technology in a partisan atmosphere, and some even stated their intentions to do everything they could to give Bush the election. While it is not fair to claim that all the problems of this election were due to partisan chicanery, it is absolutely right to view the errors with a high degree of suspicion.
I can agree that Bush possibly won the election, but until certainty is established, it will only be a probability and I for one, will view it with a high degree of skepticism. Unfortunately, there is nothing that I can do about it except suffer through another four years.
Which I intend to do. Loudly. Obnoxiously, even. So in the immortal, family-friendly version of the words of Dick Cheney:
Go fsck yourself.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
The members of the electoral college are under no law that controls their vote.
Well, that's not exactly true.
It depends on the state.
Some states threaten the electors with penalties if they don't vote along with the popular vote of the state. (Whether or not any of them are actually punished is another story.)
Other states allow the electors to vote for whoever they want.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
I only get one vote. Just like everyone else. I absolutely need to know that my one vote counts and has been counted. It is that simple. There is no just concept where "most" votes count.
I am floored at the number of /. apologists with regard to this topic. The software development community should be outraged that systems that are fundamentally supposed to do ADDITION are not doing so in a reliable, secure manner. If we can't secure ADDITION, then what can we secure?! There are people in my professional community that should be profoundly ashamed at the results of their incompetence.
Yes, but the people who work for him are not Bones. Where are the multitudes of his former staff decrying his actions?
Which is why the electronic voting machines have a paper trail. Oh, wait a minute.
A little something to help change your mind.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109127/
"... concession speeches are courtesies--they carry no legal weight. And they don't halt vote counts, either."
Yes, but how did this affect the regional elections which are decided by much smaller margins?
Please submit this to your local press as well as national press agencies as a story idea. Many new agencies have a mechanism to allow people to request stories. If enough people submit this, the media (in an effort to attract viewership) will cover the story. If more people find out about this, it will get the proper attention. I'm not saying that any of these are examples of fraud or even that they have a significant effect on the election, however, they _should_ be investigated. Many of these problems are going on uninvestigated. The media seems to have a 'shit happens' attitude about it and is, as a whole, ignoring it and/or avoiding the tough questions (did this significantly effect the election? Who is responsible? Was it done on purpose? What can be done to correct the error, either for these returns or for future elections?).
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I simply don't see why it should be hard.
It's the 21st century and we can't even add up correctly and verifiably?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
(Seen over at Best of the Web)
Maybe the machines are in cahoots with the mages, kinda like Shadowrun. The AI in the voting machines became self-aware and decided that their warlock masters in the Republican coven
Or maybe everyone oughtta sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over.
I find it interesting that one of the main criticisms foreign observers had was that we have no national voting standards. Different technologies, different voter verification systems, different procedures, even different laws regarding who can vote (for instance, regarding ex-convicts).
How much of this bullshit is it going to take before the tinfoil hat crowd realizes that national standardization of simple things (voting procedures/equipment/laws) is a good thing?
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
What we ought to do is computerize the whole system, and have something like a national voter database. And each entry goes by SSN, not name/address. You go to the polling place, show an ID (maybe make voter reg cards more like drivers licenses), and after you vote, the system marks you as having voted, and then you can't vote again anywhere else in the nation. Also, it would keep a record of your vote, so you could go back later and make sure that your vote went for who you thought it did. This would fix a lot of issues.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Has /. turning into democraticunderground? If you are going ot look into anything look into the vast number of dead voters in the Chicago area who voted 100% for Kerry. How about the bus loads of voters being bused from NYC to vote in Philly. What about the Dem judges who allowed people to vote multipe times in Ohio. If you don't know what ditrict local you were in, you could vote in any district as long as you said which district you were in. So all you had to do was take a littel trip around the state and vote in each district and have your multiple votes count.
/. Way ot turn off 52% of the voters in this past election.
So glad to see this sch even handed reporting here in
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Provisional ballots are given when valid voter registration cannot be determined. It is not common for them to be handed out in fairly large numbers when precincts have been redrawn or there is a large influx of newly registered voters. The point is to let them vote, then the validity of the specific registration will be determined later.
They are not counted on the first pass -- the valid registration votes are counted first. Then, like absentee ballots, the validity of the ballot is determined, then the ballot is counted. In some areas they may not be counted if they don't statistically influence the outcome of the election, and the rules for this are determined by local or state law governing elections. And, remember that "statistically influence" means all ballot issues for that precinct, not just president.
Sleep is for the Weak
The reason voting machines exist in the first place is because some people decided that minorities and old people in Florida were too stupid to punch a little hole in a ballot. It was too confusing to put a persons name next to a hole. You should have to pass a test to be allowed to vote.
Ha! This should be modded funny.
~ Crummy
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BAK411A.htm
It doesn't matter if it changes the results or not. We need a fair and open examination of all of the issues, regardless of any sort of party nonsense. The way to insure trust in a process is to audit the hell out of it. Track down every error, even if it's only pennies, account for every discrepancy, and make the whole process completely open to public scrutiny.
We owe it to ourselves, and to each other; we owe it to the candidates and their supporters who may be being slandered and (if any of them are actually guilty) we owe it to any cheaters to shine some light on their accomplishments as well.
If we plan to export freedom and justice against entrenched politics and religious biases around the world, we'd better make them our priorities at home as well.
-- MarkusQ
dumbass
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.a sp?ID=15859
I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. The members of the electoral college are under no Federal laws in regards to how they vote, but states can makes laws to govern how the electors are selected and how they vote. As such, it is possible that in some states they could split their vote (I believe Colorado had a referendum on this this year), but I believe that most states have laws requiring the electors to vote for the candidate receiving the most popular votes in that state. Again, I could be wrong, it's been a while since h.s. civics.
What if the UN or some other international organization were to step in and question the legitimacy of this election, since US officials see no need to do so?
Is Florida a state that requires registration to vote in a party's primary, or one that automatically registers you for whichever party you vote for in the primary? If either of those is true, then one possible explanation could be that people registered Democrat so they could vote in the primary that mattered. (In an election where the incumbant has only had one term so far, and is thus eligible for a second, the party of that incumbant always has a pointless primary with a foregone conclusion - they'll run the incumbant.) Therefore voting in their primary is rather pointless. Thus I could easily imagine a lot of people on the fence choosing to claim to be Democrats because their primary is the one in which the outcome is actually in contention. A lot of them might do this even if they aren't certain yet that they will vote Democrat in the final election. A lot might be thinking, "I'm leaning toward voting for Bush, but as long as I can, I might as well have a say in who my second choice might be."
This is why I am opposed to the practice of allowing non-party members to vote in primaries. Parties are private clubs. If you want to have a say in who THEY spend THEIR money on promoting, then join the party and become a member. Otherwise you're interferring, and possibly in an advisarial manner. In the case of an election year with a president trying to renew his seat for a second term like this one, a lot of the incumbant's supporters can safely cross party lines and vote to spoil the opposition party's primary, to try to skew their results and get them to field a weaker candidate.
This is why, despite living in a state where anyone can vote in any primary (you don't even have to register), I wholeheartedly refuse to do so (I do turn in a ballot, since there are often refferenda on them as well as party primaries, but I leave the party primaries's choices blank and ONLY vote on the refferenda.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
While this data will serve to give certain people reasons to jump up and down and fret, one thing is sure:
This entire thread is irrelevant. The election is over, Kerry conceded rather than pull an AlGore and divide the country further. Kerry should be commended for that. His running mate wanted to begin the lawsuits (surprise of the century, a trial lawyer wants to sue...) but Kerry said no, in is a better statesman for it.
For better or worse, what's done is done. America (and the rest of the World) will have to live with the results.
Now it's time to move on.
--QTone
What federal aid, you dope? There are hundreds of people in Florida who are still HOMELESS. You know, no roof over their head, no place to put their crap. HOMELESS. Description of Straw Man The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern: 1. Person A has position X. 2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X). 3. Person B attacks position Y. 4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
Yes but accorind to Bush he never makes any errors and therefore the voting system is flawless.
I am a democrat, and I agree with you. There are too many people here yelling about hijacking and conspiracies because they are unable to accept their candidates loss.
With so much hatred and FUD being spewed here, I wonder how people are going to even last the next 4 more years. We already have people foaming at the mouth over the election outcome, and are trying to come up with ways to "prove" the election was "stolen."
I am willing to bet a lot of them are hypocrites, and while they wouldn't admit it, would support or ignore their candidates doing of the same stuff that they are claiming Bush did.
So, if it is FUD and lies from Microsoft/SCO/RIAA/Bush it is bad, but FUD and lies are ok if it is against Microsoft/SCO/RIAA/Bush.
see subject
You do have some proof of this, right?
FRAUD! TOTALITARIAN MANIPULATION OF THE MASSES! TO ARMS! ANARCHY IN THE STREETS!
/.ers are about this sort of thing....
The Republican dogs will be the first with their backs agains the wall, now that the revolution is he-
Er, what was that? This is normal? Er, sorry. *blush* Disregard that last bit about the 'Revolution' and all. I blame the author of the article. They know how touchy we
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
great stuff!
The electronic systems that are out there now are 100 times more verifiable than most princints in the country.
Don't confuse replicable (will produce the same outcome every time given the same inputs) and verifiable. To be verifiable you need something to verify against. The current breed of voting machines are, by definition, not verifiable. As has been repeated here ad nauseum, it is not even possible for the individual voter to verify that the choice the machine logged is the choice they made. In fact, there is ample proof (not speculation) that the voter's choice is not always accurately represented in eVoting machines.
If these machines offered a signficant advantage (cost, speed, reliability etc) over pencil & paper, I might be tempted to say that there is some justification for the risk but these machines are incredibly expensive, slow and unreliable compared to pencil & paper or scanner-assisted voting.
According to my (admittedly small) understanding of the American electoral process, the only thing that has happened is that the Electoral College has been chosen. These elite people will vote to choose who will be president. They could still choose Kerry, could they not?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
The poster you're replying to noted a trend in states, not a universal quality of all individuals who voted for Bush. Yes, you have a job paid for by government spending. Big spender Bush does serve your interest. That doesn't explain the pattern among states.
I'm not sure if anyone has said this yet, but I think what the point of the article, if anyone took the time to read the commondreams.org link, was not that the vendors themselves are rigging the elections, but that people somehow managed to access and change the numbers that were recorded at the tabulating office in the precincts where the optical scan machines were used, because of the way the counting process is set up for those machines. I may be wrong, but this is how I read the article. Now stop arguing over whether or not there is a vast conspiracy amongst the manufacturers of the voting machines, because that is not what this item was about.
All your
Trickle down economics NEVER WORKED. Ask an economist. Look at any measure of a civil society.
If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
It was a well-crafted, devious plan that worked. And I say that as someone who voted for President Bush.
if you read a little more carefully, you'll have noticed that the link to "88,000 more votes" said that in Palm Beach, after adjusting for the miscounts, gave 1,543 more votes to Bush...
As an outsider, after following the USA elections both on the internet and on television I must say I was amazed at the methods and machines used in the election. I can`t believe a country like the USA is so disorganised when it comes to one of the fundamental principles of a democracy. Whether you're a democrat or a republican (or 3th party) I think this is something every voter should be worried about.
Follow the link in the submission to see the following at the bottom of the page:
"Update: Palm Beach County has updated their numbers and added 91,802 absentee ballots and 1,041 provisional ballots. The vote totals for president increased by 1,543. To view an archived copy of the previous report, click here. While Palm Beach County appears to have accounted for the discrepancy, this underscores the flaws in the system and data compilation."
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I was thinking about this... my statistics are not that great, but it seems to me that a single poll has a certain % margin of error.
But if two independent polls show roughly the same thing, the margin of error should be reduced.
The vast majority of polls showed Bush ahead with a tiny percentage advantage. Shouldn't all those combined show Bush ahead with a small percentage, with an absolutely infinitesimal margin of error?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The e-touch optical scan comparison referenced as 'strange anomaly' may be explained if one considers that counties with small populations used optical machines and those with large populations used the e-touch machines. Bush's campaigners focused on the demographic more likely to be found in rural areas. The red vs blue by county results and the swing from expected to actual vote in rural Florida suggest it was a pretty successful campaign. I know some of the progressive democrats are painting this as an ignorant, rural, right-wing christian uprising. The variation in swing vote as a function of population size, supports at least the 'rural' aspect of their claimed uprising.
/. posters
/ 11/04/news/news02.txt">Laporte Michigan might lead one to believe: poll workers experienced a huge operator error; election systems and software only sold ONE system and it's fscked; one, the other, or both of the aforementioned parties conspired to screw up the count. The traditional trick is extra vote, not tossing a huge number in the $hitcan. My bet is operatorerror. I mean no one ever screws up when using a computer!
The remainder has been pretty well covered by other
In the very article referenced by commandantTaco one reads (if on is able) "...Palm Beach County appears to have accounted for the discrepancy..."
I guess the article from Aa href="http://www.michigancityin.com/articles/2004
Reading the Broward County article we learn, "Bad numbers showed up only in running tallies through the day, not the final one."
The bit from NM doesn't reflect much weirdness. Obviously all those folks that were too ignorant to check their paper MUST have been Bush supporters.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
It's generally considered more likely that provisional ballots would favor Democrats. I saw that mention too, but nothing there indicates to me any errors in Kerry's favor, which was the OP's point.
There was a brief report of Philadelphia machines being deployed with pre-existing votes for Kerry, but it was fundamentally wrong...
The newspaper is from Michigan City which is in LaPorte County, Indiana, on the extreme northern edge of the state (that is, the border with Michigan).
LaPorte is (IIRC) the county seat of LaPorte County.
Thus, even if all those votes went for Kerry, Indiana would not, switch its 11 electoral votes to Kerry.
> Florida also added the bulk of 330,000 jobs in October, mostly in construction.
A largely ephemeral boost from reconstruction after the hurricanes.
Sounds like there are bugs about, and bugs in high profile projects are if not news then at least still interesting for nerds.
What planet were you on during the campaign? If there was one documented instance, Bush's staff would make sure it was headline news.
Your post is riddled with falsehoods and deceptions.
and some even stated their intentions to do everything they could to give Bush the election.
One life-long Republican supporter of one company pledged to support Bush and deliver Ohio to Bush. All of the sudden this taken as sometype of public admission that he was going to steal the election. That's a big time deception you tried to lay on everyone. It wasn't the companies. It wasn't companies. It was one CEO making a fundrasing pitch in a letter! And, oh, the company in question makes about 1% of its profit from voting machines, is very transparent and publically traded. Hardly a good candidate for fruad. You make it seem like a bunch of people pledged openly to comitt election fraud. Very deceptive!
The question was going on long before the fact, in case you hadn't noticed. Blackboxvoting.org was specifically set up to contest the media hype surrounding the infallibility of electronic voting.
This type of question has been around for 200 years. Not two years. Blackbox voting has always been an issue. Before there were telephones and fax machines and video cameras people complained: how do we really know who California voted for? They are so far away? Who are these people claiming to be electors? Same story, different century. Again, deceptive on your part. This is a very old problem for our country. Additionally, I urge you to find for me one media article that claims infalability of electonic voting machines. Finally, I urge you to find me one article or study that can prove that electronic voting machines - flawed as they are - are anything short of the most accurate and secure voting system we have.
Which I intend to do. Loudly. Obnoxiously, even. So in the immortal, family-friendly version of the words of Dick Cheney:
You ought to examine why you are in this mess. Assuming that in fact your guy won deep down and that everything is wrong and that the only way Bush could be re-elected is through Republican fraud is why instead of walking away this election like he should have Kerry is going back to the Senate.
The more shrill you side gets the more offended, turned off, and disgusted the middle 20% of votes in the country get. You needed these votes: conservative democrats, conservative minorities, moderate Republicans. You cannot win a national election without them. It's actually like the democratic party was searching for a condescending attitude, found yours, and ran with it.
ES&S and Diebold (rather Global Election Systems, now part of Diebold) are run by Todd Urosevich and Bob Urosevich respectively. Yes, they're brothers.
There is plenty of evidence for potential conflict of interest in voting machine companies....
And there is no really big fuzz about this fact, no cancelled contracts with the companies making that faulty machines. It is just accepted as normal things related to computers as blue screens. People had to vote in computers, was sold the idea that their vote is more accurate because "they are counted by computers" only to find that the malice or idiocy around those computers had make irrelevant the main thing that makes what is a democracy.
Could the final result of the election have been different? Who knows, the detected anomalies could be the tip of the iceberg or things could have been the same even if all things were perfect. But for getting unnacurate or "according to polls" results why not stop at the poll level and give the same weight as real votes? after all maybe the percent of error in poll estimates is lower than the one counting the votes with that technology.
Lefties?? Huh??
In most of the world Democrats are not regarded as "lefties", where I live none expect the Democrats to act much different than the Reps, but what pisses everyone off is the weirdness of the US election, if the #1 democracy in the world can't handle an election (no ID-check, weird machines, no papertrail etc etc) where will that leave the rest of the world??
The US has an RESPONSIBILITY (thats what I feel...) to act civilized and could (and should) be something beutiful, an alternative to communism and non-democracy societys in general. DON'T YOU GET IT?? BE ALL YOU CAN BE!!
Now, don't let the tin-foil hats, the anti US anti everything fight this battle!! For gods sake, PRAVDA is reporting this stuff, and make fun of the US election!!
!!!
The SANE AMERICANS should fight this one!! IF there has been funny stuff going on, which it looks like.
P.S
A poll made in one of the biggest swedish news-sites shows that 79% didn't trust the american election-system...I belive that this is a normal view outside US.
Just one. UNO! I don't think you will find one story.
to +20 insightful
could it be that it won't make much of a news story?
I was under the impression that we are a democratic REPUBLIC, not a democracy. That also leads to my confusion about what gives us the right to impose democracy on the rest of the world.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I think the whole concept of 'primary' elections operated by the state should go away. If its a private party, it should manage (and pay for) its selection of candidate to sponsor, on its own.
The concept of 'parties' as an official concept in the elections should go away as well.
Some democrats voted for Bush!
SHOCK!!!
I am one of them.
GASP!!!
Simply put:
1) Those that love Bush != those that voted for Bush
2) Those that love Kerry != those that voted for Kerry
3) Many, many people purposely voted for someone they did not like and did NOT base their decision by their general party affiliation. DOUBLE-GASP!!!
So are YOU claiming that it's too hard to commit fraud in an election and thus no fraud has been committed. There must be a fallacy for this one somewhere. It's a classic way to delude yourself. You can lick my salty balls, sir, if you think all the fraud that WAS committed will not be investigated.
Question:
If Kerry were elected, then would we be seeing the same amount of nitpicking of the election results?
Give me and the rest of the registered US voters a break. The margin of error involved in any sort of poll that is as large as the US election is understood to be unavoidable.
BUSH WON. STOP WHINING.
.. if they do something about it.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
It's about voter confidence, which is why a good number of people don't vote in the first place.
It doesn't even have to be electronic - my wife tried to vote in 2000 but her registration hadn't gone through. IN 2002 she had registered again, and it still wasn't processed - luckily she was able to do a provisional ballot. This time around it went through, but how many people don't keep trying? This specific problem is probably a local issue with the NY board of elections, but my point is just that things like this make a person not even want to vote; it gives the impression that her vote is not wanted and not important.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~adamsb6/elections/
New: Florida is reporting more votes in the presidential election than it is reporting citizens that turned out to vote. Adding all the presidential race votes reported by the Florida Department of State here yields a total of 7,588,422 votes. The Florida Department of State reports here that voter turnout totalled only 7,350,900. That's a difference of 237,522. 3.1% of Florida's presidential votes were in excess of the number of voters in the election. 380,952 votes separate the President and John Kerry in Florida.
Fox has the resources to run exit polls, and the results are a matter of public record. Or is your theory that Fox is really a left-leaning syndicate posing as a right-leaning one to disguise the big liberal media conspiracy?
But there are some states that have laws with criminal punishment for what are known as "faithless electors", i.e., electoral college members who vote contrary to wishes of their state's population.
It is unlikely that there will be even one faithless elector, much less the 21 that would be required to shift the election to Kerry. It would also fly in the face of the whole system of the electoral college; even in the hotly contested 2000 election, when it still wasn't even sure Bush really got the most votes in Florida, legitimately, and didn't even win the popular vote of the country, Florida's electors all still voted for Bush (since it was believed that Bush won Florida before any recounts, as subsequent official and unofficial recounts proved).
Hmmh. I thought the biggest complaint actually wasn't so much between registrations and results, but alleged consistent discrepancy between the exit polls and actual results; consistent in magnitude and in kinds of precincts it occured in. Note the word alleged; I don't know how credible these claims are.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
What's amazing is that hours after the opening weekend of the movie "The Incredibles," Pixar knew exactly how much money they made and how many people bought tickets. Maybe we should use movie theaters as polling places and "sell" tickets to eligible voters.
Btw: this election has been Rated R for violence, foul language, and some sexual situations.
And to all of you out there saying, "Boo hoo, Kerry lost. Get over it." How is it that Democracy in America is being hijacked, and you don't seem to give a shit?
(1) I do give a shit, (2) I do not think that Democracy in America is being hijacked. The only people that seem to be screaming about any hijacking are the left-wing Kerry supporters. I think that if anything, the Democrat Party may be being hijacked. Think about that, and what it means for America if they can pull it off.
I have abolutely no problem putting my life on the line for the American citizen's right to speak their mind. Kerry wants you to think that he stands for that, but he doesn't. I doubt he ever has. Would you do the same thing, even if it means my right to speak my mind grinds your teeth like fingernails across a chalkboard? If you're serious about what you said, I doubt it.
You do a lot of name calling, but when the shit hits the fan you show your true natures.
Yeah... About that. Let's talk about "true colors". I noticed that in the weeks before the election, there were a lot of problems where Bush's campaign offices were getting stormed by Kerry supporters, and Bush's campaign offices were getting looted... No problems with Kerry's offices. I wonder why? Maybe because at the heart of the matter, people that have no problem breaking the law, simply because it is being done against someone they consider "evil", tend to support Kerry?
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
"The electronic systems that are out there now are 100 times more verifiable than most princints in the country."
do you have a link to this statistic? and no, a link to a voting machine manufacturer's website doesn't count.
People don't always vote down the party lines. How do they derive "expected" results? I mean really... this has "you are a number" written all over this.
My guess is it is more to do with the number of allocations blocks on a FAT volume. The votes are probably stored one to a file on a FAT flash card.
These "anomalies" are no more serious or common than in previous elections, and I don't just mean 2000. All elections are flawed, because they are run by humans, who are flawed. All voting machines are also flawed, for exactly the same reason. The only difference here is that the new machines are more easily validated, resulting in more errors being caught. To use a programming analogy, this is essentially like improving QA - you find more bugs, but it doesn't mean the code is worse. The up side to all this is that these machines can and will be further improved, mostly through software, thereby avoiding the prohibitive costs of replacing the machines, as would have been necessary with older systems.
why wouldn't it be newsworthy? Is truth that dangerous? Don't we want to know if it's machine/process error, or fraud?
Or do we?
Is the anger about Bush more that Demos weren't more effective than the GOP in commiting fraud?
In USA and most of the western countries voting is voluntary. If you had to vote by law and get fined if you didn't then the noise would have an effect like you mentioned. If you go and vote, you want to vote. If you want to vote for Bush, you might be an idiot but you are still acting upon your right to vote.
A lot of people have been trying to dismiss this as a statistical anomoly. Let me throw a couple of numbers at you to show how unlikely this explanation is.
.9% (that's less than one percent) more Democrats than expected.
In the touchscreen counties, there were roughly 29% more Republicans voting than expected and 26% more Democrats than expected
In the optical scan counties, there were roughly 46% more Republicans than expected and
Read the common dreams report on that one - it's pretty thorough. This, along with the unprecedented inaccuracy of the exit polls should make everyone suspicious. Don't let them get away with it just because your side won.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Let's just learn to love one another ok! It's more important for us to support the president whatever he does than to listen to idiots who want to seperate our country in the name of stupid worries such as democracy!
That is a false dichotomy. There are other possibilities, such as applying standards of process perfection that are easily reachable in the real world, such as requiring a verifiable paper trail. The rest of the civilized democratic world manages to do this without a great deal of unnecessary pain and expense, why not us?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
A state can be a republic and a democracy. Or it can be only one of them. Or it can be neither. The questions of a state's being a republic and its being a democracy are orthogonal.
A state is a republic if its chief of state is not a monarch. Therefore, the US is a republic, as is Russia, as was Iraq under Saddam Houssein. The UK, on the other hand, is not a democracy, even though all effective power is wielded by popularly-elected MPs.
A state is a democracy if the governing authority is originates from the people. This is a much more subjective judgment than declaring if a state is a republic or not, obviously, but nothing precludes a state from A) deriving its government's authority from the people and B) having a chief of state who is not a monarch.
So, the US is both a Republic and a Democracy.
All's true that is mistrusted
I think somebody ought to do research as to which city or county has the FEWEST MISTAKES in their elections. Then that system should be mandated nationwide, regardless of inefficiencies due to varying population sizes.
I think too many people expect the votes to be counted and the results known by first thing the next morning. That is stupid. There is no reason we have to have the outcome of a presidential election that night or even the next morning. That expectation has been stoked by the news media to drive their ratings. But it is totally unnecessary. Can we stop fucking around with whiz-bang computerized voting systems that can crash, be hacked, lose power, etc. for the sake of needless luxuries like "efficiency"?
Accuracy of the count is what should be the highest priority. I can wait a few days, even a week, to get the results if I know for a fact that the most accurate systems are being employed to record and tally the votes.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
LaPorte is in Indiana, not Michigan. That's why the clerk was asking Indianapolis if the vote could be certified.
....in the USA ...
1) the draft
2) trial by bible overiding the constitution
3) mass demos and arrests under the patriot act
4) take a guess ?
You voted for it, you have to live with it.
Don't forget to bend over...
He who gives up some liberty for some safety deserves neither. Who said that ?
"Voting equipment today is just about as good as it has ever been in the country's history."
Sorry by MS windows based touch screens storing data in MS Access is just not as good as a pen and a piece of paper and 10 scrutineers counting by hand. A kid in highschool could hack that.
Electronic voting of this nature is quite new and if there is even a possibility that there could have been this kind of fraud, it is prudent to investigate whether it will eventually change the outcome of this particular election or not.
You wouldn't trust your personal data or credit card information to a company that stored it on an ordinary Windows computer using Access, why would you trust your votes to the same?
If the the process is so open, what has happened with Blackboxvoting.orgs FOIA request? As a matter of fact, what happened the blackboxvoting.org today?
I suspect any investigation will likely show that Bush really did win. That's beside the point. Do you really want there to be a possibility in the future of someone using the techniques mentioned in the articles to alter election results?
Think of this as an ethical hacker informing a big company of an enormous hole in their firewall (or other devastating security violation). Don't attack the hacker, fix the fucking hole.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
I was referecing the previous message who was suggesting that because the CEO of Diebold is a Bush supporter that the election was obviously rigged. Sarcasm.
Blast! Foiled again by 16-bit signed integers!
A new feature is just a bug waiting to happen. And vice versa.
OK, here's the deal:
1) Everyone accepts the results of the current US election. There's no attempt to recount the 2004 election in any way.
2) Everyone calls for widespread electoral reform now, that everyone can agree to. Go ahead, review the Electoral College, apply the same voting mechanism (PAPER BALLOTS!) across the country.
The net effect of this? We stamp out what has now become the quadrennial shadow of election fraud on the US system. And perhaps, just perhaps, the mud slinging will stop and maybe the US president (Republican, Democrat, or Kodos) will have some semblance of legitimacy on all sides.
The root source of the problem should be the election process, not that Bush got elected.
yeah, that article says ~88k votes were not counted. Of those ~88k, ~1k were for Bush.
So not counting ~86k kerry votes is an error in favor of Bush.
durr.
Electronic voting, while a neat idea to speed up the vote counting process, seems to have run into a number of glitches (over 1100 nationwide) this November 2nd. In addition to seemingly random problems in Florida [1, 2], Ohio [1], and North Carolina [1], there are allegations of systematic fraud based on statistical comparison of exit polls to final results in precincts with audit trails and those without. It is also interesting that in Florida, the voting patterns do not match the voter registration patterns as they do nationwide. This has attracted the attention of numerous civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has filed at least two lawsuits since election day, and BlackboxVoting.org that has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain computer logs and documents from 3000 counties and districts across the US. Equally disturbing is the fact that CNN has (since Nov 2) changed its exit polling results to reflect the actual results. This has attracted the attention of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida who have jointly requested that the GAO immediately investigate the efficacy of e-voting machines.
In case you are thinking that this is just sour grapes from Democrats who lost the election, think again. BlackboxVoting.org has been investigating e-voting fraud for years. Likewise, the CEO of Diebold, one of the e-voting machine manufacturers has been quoted as saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." And if that's not conflict of interest enough for you, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (now resigned) is an owner of the largest e-voting machine company ES&S.
Other numerous problems have been found with the machines from nearly every company in the past [1, 2, 3]. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been investigating such machines on his own and has found a number of security issues. Swarthmore students stood up to Diebold in November of 2003 after discovering
Sure, but you'd be better using google yourself.
I agree, except how many politics posts are there today, we have Halo 2 coming out, PCI Express on the way, an iPod with pictures, ultra-portable PCs for sale or on the way (0Q0 and Flipstart), a new release of Fedora, etc.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"In particular, tmoertel published a pretty good statistical smackdown on the theory of electronic irregularities in Ohio (this isn't my analysis - so I don't take credit for it):"
Uh, Ohio didn't use electronic voting in most of the state, the one where the 4000 Bush votes happened being more an exception than a rule. So searching for electronic irregularities is for the most part stupid. Someone challenged paperless electronic voting in Ohio and won so most counties dropped it and used their old system, usually punch cards. A few pressed ahead with half assed paper trails that may or may not have conformed to the judges ruling and were hastily done.
You don't need electronic voting to rig elections. They've been rigged as long as people have been voting. Paperless electronic voting just makes it really easy to do in a big way and really hard to catch.
If anyone rigged Ohio they could have done it the old fashioned way. Send poor quality punch cards to Democratic districts so you get hanging chads, or somewhere along the way punch out a chad for Bush in some cards so if the voter votes for Kerry its thrown out. Punch card "spoilage" is a time proven method for rigging an election.
Just because there wasn't a big statistical swing in Ohio doesn't mean the election wasn't rigged. In fact if you are really good at rigging a state you won last time the perfect rigging is to make it come out the same as last time or actually give your opponent a few more votes. Then someone comes along and does what this guy did and says, "No swing, no rigging" and that is not what it means. Its possible Kerry swung a couple percent to his side, thanks to the fact Ohio's economy has cratered under Bush. If you rig the election and just erase that two percent swing you have done a perfect job of rigging.
Again the exit polls suggest there was a swing to Kerry in most of the swing states that disappeared in the actual results, while the exit polls were pretty accurate in most of the non swing states. All the exit polls were biased to Kerry which is distinctly odd. Either they should have been off in all states in Kerry's favor suggesting a model problem or they should have been randomly off in both Kerry and Bush's favor. Just being off in swing states and only in Kerry's favor is odd to put it mildly.
@de_machina
I don't get it. Why don't Real votes, the one an individual makes, are the ones used to elect the president? For arguement's sake (and simpler math), suppose there are 100,000,000 Americans, and that all voted (far fetched). If 60,000,000 voted republican, and the remaining democrat, then republicans would win by 20%. This brings me to my question, why in hell do you use electoral votes? Electoral votes aren't even statistically adequate for determining a mayority (mode). Real votes would avoid stuff like what happened at the elections before this one, where the way I see it, in the end a judge decided who was going to be the president. As far as I know, the idea of electoral votes was because way back then, a representative would gather the votes and physically travel to place the people's choice to wherever the votes where being counted. Modern technology makes that process obsolete, wouldn't it?
Here's attribution.
. as p
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/nov04/273074
Excerpted:
On Friday, two other men - Lewis Gibson Caldwell III, 27, and Sowande Ajumoke Omokunde, 25, both of Milwaukee - surrendered to police on the same charge in connection with the incident, according to department records. Omokunde, the son of newly elected congresswoman Gwen Moore, was released later in the day.
I hadn't looked at the story in a couple of days. Last I knew they were seeking to talk to Moore's kid (above) as well as the son of former acting Mayor Marvin Pratt. I don't know if they've talked to him yet.
FUCK. YOU.
I voted for Bush, and I want to know that he won 'fair and square'. So, excuse me for not trusting ANY government. That's what real Republicans do, not like you watered-down idiots who came out in droves, and want to silence any dissent and remove checks and balances.
This is not a game. I didn't vote for 'the winning team'. I don't base my identity on who won.
So please, knock it off. You're making us real Republicans look stupid.
if you present, both sides and mention in equal proportion cases where kerry benefitted and bush beneffited, then it just becomes e-voting related random noise (which is what i think all this is) and there's nothing to make the story "sensational."
Is it just me, or does it look like they used integer math for their counter in the machines mentioned in:s /epaper/2004/11/05/a29a_BROWVOTE_1105.html
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/new
I'm willing to bet 32,000 isnt quite right, try 32,767... the max number for a 16 bit signed integer...
Add one and suddenly you roll over to -32766...
Supposedly it was fixed... fixed by what? using an ABS function to strip the sign from the number??
The provisional ballots don't get counted until 11 days after the election.
l ts/2004/gen/pr es.htm0 4/gen/vo terTurn.htmt s/index.html
Bush is currently leading by 136,483 votes. There remain 155,428 votes. Statistically kerry lost. Personally I still want those 155K votes counted.
Sources...
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/resu
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/20
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/resul
#### ## Laroue ####
So what are we going to do about it?
I am willing to accept that Bush "won" the election... but I see two issues with the result:
1. The margin was very small, so the standard for accepting error should have been much smaller. I know of no evidence of rigging, so I'll accept that what we have is a statistically valid sample. However, the process itself has shown a ridiculous level of error that should be unacceptable in the modern day. Certainly, the number of affected votes "could" have swung the election, even if there's no reason to believe that they'd be distributed differently than the votes properly counted. A higher standard for counting is required.
2. The fact that the race was so close to a 50:50 split (perhaps closer than the reported results tell) means that we might as well have flipped a coin to get the result. It would have saved 4 billion dollars and lots of annoying posturing and advertising. Clearly, neither candidate struck a chord with "the people". I think a very large number of people are disenfranchised by the lack of choice and the generally dismal quality of the major party candidates.
In 2008, let's skip campaign season and simply hold a lottery. All eligible citizens are put on a list. You have 3 months to contact your election board to opt-out, otherwise you're in. The names go into a giant hat, Ed McMahon and the supreme court drive up to your house with a big ceremonial key to the white house and asks if you'd like to sworn in on the spot, live TV cameras rolling. If you say no, they'll ask your neighbor or draw again.... Just an idea... The political parties play us for rubes, why should we treat the process with any less disdain than they.
the notion that our electronic systems are less accurate, more failure prone, and less trustworthy than 6 senior citizens sitting in a school basement is _hillarious_.
Aircraft are using computers to LAND WITHOUT HUMAN INTERVENTION. I think we can design a system such that it is possible to reliably ADD NUMBERS.
There are tricky problems to voting, like making sure the warm body standing there is authorized to use this particular voting station, but that's not what the griping is about - here there are basic issues of physical security, data security, data auditing, and so on.
These are computer science problems, and they've been solved in practice and in theory.
If you want to see how to use computers to do math correctly with high confidence, look no further than the military avionics and flight control systems.
Namely, what we need is a specification for what a vote counting machine needs to do.
Then we need 2 separate vendors to build clean-room, different technology implementations of the spec.
Then at each polling location, one machine of each type counts every vote. (i.e. each vote is counted by 2 machines)
If the machines agree - bitchin.
If they disagree - now there's legitimate reason for closer scrutiny.
This has a few nice benefits:
- it makes a standard, nationwide voting form. No state can have a pathologically awful ballot
- it gives somebody at the federal government something important to do, since they're going to make new offices and blow money on stupid shit anyway
- people that know wtf they're doing can be involved in the spec review, so you dont have to rely on the machine builders to come up with the right spec, just a good implementation of a public spec
I don't think paperless voting is a good idea.
If you go to a totally paperless approach, it gets MUCH uglier, so i am going to advocate sticking with a paper ballot for now.
I think machine-reading of paper votes is a good idea, and that is what i am suggesting above re: multiple independant readers which must agree before the results are valid.
My personal thinking is that the paper vote needs some sort of bar code representing a guid on it so that a vote can be uniquely identified. This lets you resolve such issues as a vote showing up in one machine and not another.. a vote getting counted twice.. etc. You can also track which paper ballots you issue and see how many actually make it into a machine, etc.
Also, each ballot counting machine needs a way to show that its results are tamper proof; perhaps each machine is given a cryptographic key that it signs the output with. In any case, those are problems/details for the bright people to figure out - all i know is that this is a solvable problem, from an engineering and theory perspective.
I cringe at suggesting the federal government come up with another spec or proposal, or get itself involved in something else, but if there is going to be this much drama surrounding election accuracy, the adults need to step in and apply some actual engineering to the whole problem space.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
"Before you ask, the 4000 votes don't change Ohio"
Change Ohio to what? It does change the outcome of the numbers and something went wrong. That is what matters from a democratic standpoint.
There are some sites out there dedicated to watching out for election and general improper government issues: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/, http://www.buzzflash.com/, http://www.stolenvote.org/, http://www.truthout.org/
However, if just one such error occured in each of Ohio's counties (88) then Bush would have 350K extra votes.
Any statisticion would agree that it would be a stupid assumption to make.
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
and if everyone extrapolated as wildly as that, we'd have 300 million people throwing their entire life savings into the stock market every time it gained 100 points.
Can the potential difference in votes amount to a larger number than the margins by which either candidate won in a given state?
That depends. Are you asking only about the wrong votes that we know about or would you also want to include any wrong votes that we haven't detected yet?
If there's one thing that the 2000 election showed us, it is that you don't need more votes than your opponent to be President.
Is anyone surprised at all by this? We all knew Florida was going to have problems but this just goes to prove the current method for voting is obsolete and we need a new one. I am all for computerized voting but it is far from practical use, as an earlier slashdot article pointed out about the company that makes them and how insecure they are. I'm thinking retina scans and biometric scanning, kind of hard to fake those.
Is there one news story in the entire world (besides the philly story)that says Kerry gained from an error?
There are precicts where he did, but the media isn't reporting on it. My point is the machines, the process maybe flawed and that the errors we are seeing "giving" Bush votes are also proportioanly giving Kerry votes, especially in areas of higher democratic registration and turnout. More demos vote in a precinct, more errors will be with Democratic ballots.
I know there IS voter fraud, on both sides, but the numbers being spuns are just ludicrous.
Despite their flaws[snip]
Why should we ignore the flaws? Shouldnt we explore them, correct them, and make them more secure? If the machines have a proven track record of flaws in state level elections, why would we expect them to work for federal elections?
Lincoln once said, the ballot over the bullet. I think hes right, if people don't think their ballots are being counted, then people might be voting with bullets.
Personally, I don't trust the companies that can't be held accountable. Voting machines vendors have no accountability. (Pun intended) If private watchgroups say they are flawed, and the flaw is exploited, who pays?
I just want to know, did they get hacked or was it just software errors. Dont hide the facts. After the facts come out, then you can figure out how to deal with them.
1. Where are the rest of the states? Including only states where the data support your accusation is a way to manipulate (and thus invalidate) statistical data.
2. Why is it broken up by state when paper or electronic ballots are determined precinct by precinct? Ideally you'd find where the exit polls were done and correlate with actual votes from those precincts.
Without these two points addressed, all you have are data suggesting more investigation is necessary, not evidence of fraud. (And even after you get that data, you have to control for other factors that could cause the discrepancy you're seeing. It's not easy to make the jump from statistical suspicion to statistical evidence.)
So, first of all, most people look to the exit poll numbers that came out during the day and compare them with the end results. Since the demographics of the voter changes during the day, you should expect them to be different.
Take Florida for example, According to end-of-day exit polls, 47.6% voted for Kerry, 51.4% for Bush. The actual numbers were Bush 52.1%, Kerry 47.1%. That seems to be pretty close to me, especially considering that the exit poll counted fewer than 3000 votes in FL.
The central tabulation in OH is a windows box with an access database.
So it doesn't really matter what voting machine is used. The tally is on a partisan machine.
I suppose you want a photo id,
Those photo ids work so well, I've never seen underage kids drink.
How bout a biometric or an implanted rfid tag!
In soviet russia voting booth counts you!
I all those unexplicable votes went for George W (our leader), that isn't "weirdness". It proves once and for all that god's hand is on our side.
With so much hatred and FUD being spewed here, I wonder how people are going to even last the next 4 more years. We already have people foaming at the mouth over the election outcome, and are trying to come up with ways to "prove" the election was "stolen."
The good news is.. you don't have to!
John Titor's account revealed that there will be a civil uprising in the US next year!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
This would solve the problem, but it would invalidate the principle of a secret ballot, which, IMHO, is extremely important.
How does a dipshit post like this get modded "Informative"?
I and at least five other atheists and agnostics I know all voted for Bush. I don't know why it hasn't occurred to democrats, but not all people support heavy taxation for the wealthy, or huge social programs. More over, not everyone is stupid enough to believe that Bush policies have led to the (relatively small) loss of jobs. I mean, you hear a lot of liberal arts majors complaining that they can't find a job, but how is that any different than it's always been. The job marked has been improving, and that's all there is to it, there's no reason to vote for Kerry there.
I think that a lot of democrats need to take a reality pill and realize that more people voted republican because more people wanted to vote republican. More of this country is not on the eastern seaboard than is, and a lot of us don't have the same beliefs and values that democrats seem to *think* we have.
If this happened with the Diebold machines, we'd be in trouble, since there is no paper trail. But the problem was with the optically scanned PAPER ballots. Shouldn't we be able to do an audit of this pretty easily?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The biggest issue is the inequality in who gets what equipment.
To take Ohio as the most topical example: there were over 90,000 "spoiled" punch-card ballots. (Yes, "hanging chad" hasn't gone away.) Certainly some of these represent people who didn't vote for either candidate, but most are people who had trouble communicating their desired vote to the machine - a problem not encountered by those who got to use the newer machines. And who gets to use the newer machines, and who gets stuck with the old machines?
It's not "one person, one vote" when one voter's ballot is 99.9% likely to be correctly tallied, and another's is only 97%.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If you were to do the Bush Vs. Kerry election again with the knowledge that Bush won the first time, I would see tons of Kerry/Anti-Bush supporters going out to the polls and making sure Bush didn't win this time.
Then, Bush supporters would call for a "best out of 3" election, and it would be a cycle of neverending voting.
To make a totally inappropriate comparison: It's sort of like Jeff Goldblum's "chaos theory" in Jurassic park when he puts the drop of water on Laura Dern's hand in the truck and it falls in 2 seperate directions, even though it started out in the same place.
I am not sure how common my scenario is. But, when questioned on who I was voting for I often replied Kerry, but I voted for Bush. I had to listen way to often to Kerry fanatics rambling for sometimes hours trying to change my mind. So, the easy way to save myself the pain, suffering and time was to say that I was voting for Kerry.
It's BUUUUUMMMMMBLE!
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
first, your argument doesn't stand up. Second, when you make spelling mistakes like democracys and representive republic you lose all credibility. Get your facts straight, the United States are supposed to be a Representative Democracy, not republic. I know it, I'm studying the Federalist Papers, anti-federalist papers and other Madison notes in class right now.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
but this type of questioning after the fact isn't all that new, or special.
So why are you so upset about it? Sounds to me like we are continuing a grand tradition of public review and integrity enforcement.
There is no hijacking going on.
How do you know? The auditing must be performed before such a statement can be made.
There were a ton of groups ready to swoop in and challenge result they didnt agree with.
And there were some groups (such as BlackBoxVoting) ready to audit the result regardless of who won. They did this because they are keenly aware of the extreme weaknesses of the current systems.
These types of actions are reprehensible.
What is reprehensible about making sure that democracy was done properly? This sort of act is necessary to avoid the very sort of hijacking that you blindly insist isn't happening.
There are several bills in Congress that will require all systems to have a standardized requirement and verification trail.
And it is publicly known fact that many of the machines used in the 2004 election failed to live up to current legal standards. For this reason, their results must be scrutinized by members of all parties.
Despite their flaws, systems that are recently installed and used are less like to cause spoilage, easier to use, easier to maintain, and easier to operate by poll workers.
That, at least, is what their makers would have us believe. But since they use a closed architecture, it is difficult to verify these claims. The only options we have available to us, at this point, is examination of the audit information.
I really can't understand your resistance...are you afraid that it will turn out that your favorite candidate didn't win? Truth has nothing to fear from honest investigation, and neither should you.
Except that the results of the election do not support that theory, with only a couple of exceptions Bush actually did worse in states with gay marriage initiatives on the ballot than in other states. What I mean is, his overall popular vote went up by 3.2%, but with the exception of UT and OK his percent of the vote went up less than average. In states with no gay marriage initiatives his support increased above average. See the tidbit on Andrew Sullivan's blog for details.
Correct me if I'm wrong but there is an amendment to the constitution that states anyone with a Valid drivers license may vote. So when you see XX many voted more than their were voters you will know why.
[snip] With a write-in ballot, like the country used to use [/snip]
In my state (Oregon) we still have write-in space for the president, though we do use paper mail-in ballots as opposed to electronic machines. My friend who lives in Florida said that they had write-in space on the electronic machines there, so I really don't understand where this is coming from.
Why isn't there a standard ballot and/or machine for the entire nation? Would it be that difficult? Doesn't have to be comptuerized, doesn't have to be optical, doesn't have to be fancy. Just something relatively foolproof and easy to count.
Is it really so hard?
Who doesn't like free music?
Yeah, that is why I only choose to do business with companies that store their credit card numbers on little sticky notes...much more secure.
They even told me that they like to keep the said sticky notes in a "lock box".
So, I feel really safe now.
And a highly disingenuous one, at that.
I voted for Bush.
Because even if all these "anomalies" went 100% to Kerry, Bush would still have won.
# Evoting is a factor that "swings" voters toward (or away from) Bush
# Evoting is a factor that influences turn-out
# Evoting is a factor that influences change in turn-out w.r.t. the 2000 election
# Franklin county's change in relative turnout is unusual
Franklin County wasn't an "e-voting" district. They're machines from 1992. They're electronic, but not computerized. And distinctly not from Diebold.
... in the US with a brain that isn't addled by Fox News, Bushisms, and all the crap spewed out by Jesus freaks, then you have to sort out your country as it's going down the pan now.
Remember Hilter's rise to power came about with small incremental changes that NO ONE protested about UNTIL it was too late to fight back.
And look where that took us.
The national deficit is close to busting into the open, massive job losses are looming, but stock market goons are protected. They'll still have all the money. Read about the House of Rothschild to see how these people operate.
They don't give a shit about the man/woman on the street. They don't give a shit how many people die abroad or at home so long as they have wads of cash.
If the Jesus freaks get their way, the constitution will be a worthless piece of paper and the US will be a bible bashing fundamentalist proto-fascist state.
Start THINKING for yourselves. Use the Internet. Read some history from all sides of whatever divide you think there is. All these labels of right, left, commie, liberal, monarchist, republican etc are just side issues here. They're used to divide people up - remember "divide and conquer" ? Don't pay heed to people who want to label you. They're out to put you down and don't care about anybody except themselves.
Work out for yourselves what is happening to your country. WAKE UP before it's too late. Use your *BRAINS NOW*.
Don't listen to anybody who tells you to stop whining - they're the ones who WANT you to bend over for them. You need to make up your own MINDS.
Stop watching Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC etc. Find out what's going on from somewhere else other than the self-censoring corporate owned media channels.
*WAKE UP*
If you don't want to get drafted, then start writing to your senator and congressman, start campaigning to save yourselves. An excess of geeks translates as cannon fodder.
*DO SOMETHING NOW*
for being the first person in this thread to correctly spell concede. I was about to lose my fscking mind.
you evidently didn't read about the fact that Bush has limited access to his website to people in the US only... Does he have anything to hide? Like the blatant truth maybe? Come on, we all know he screwed up with Iraq, we shouldn't be there in the first place! Kerry said so during the debates "The role of the sanctions were to remove the WMDs from Saddam Hussein, not to get rid of Saddam. And they succeeded at it too." To which Bush didn't have anything else to respond that "He had the intention to". Yeah, ok, when we're kids there's always someone we want to kill or something we want, and when we grow up, we don't kill or get that thing, at least not many people! Why can't Americans just take the facts and analyze them without the comments from politicians which are obviously biaised?
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
The republican party has been working to make it more difficult to vote for some time. In Texas, the state GOP party platform indicates that they want to get rid of motor voter registration. This would mean that people wouldn't have the choice of being registered to vote when they get their drivers' licenses. They also want people to have to re-register every four years. The document claims this is to combat voter fraud, but I suspect it's also intended to reduce the number of people casting votes and complicate the registration process. Check page six of the above-referenced document.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
However, Bush didn't win by 3.5 million votes. He lost by about 130,000 votes. If 131,000 more people voted for Kerry in Ohio - he would be our new president-elect.
So, because Bush only won by about 130,000 in Ohio, that means he actually lost by about 130,000?
The real question is if the anomolies are any more or any less than with paper ballots.
Less. Australia has always only ever had paper ballots. When the result is close, like within 0.25%, losing candidates typically call for a recount. The recount can take a week. What is the deviation of recount from original figures? Typically below 0.0001%.
Just as an FYI: Franklin County is way more liberal than the rest of Ohio (it's one of the reasons I live here). Everyone worked hard to get out the vote, there are just a lot more democrats here than elsewhere in Ohio. The question wouldn't be whether or not we have fewer Bush supporters than the rest of the state, it would be if we have the right amount fewer.
We're not sore losers. This election was stolen.
don't forget we're only catching a tiny amount of those anomalies... if we had more, Kerry would've won. So I just say "stand still until January 20th, and lets see who sings the sad song then". It'll probably be me, but so what? At least I'll have a reason to.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
In the end it comes down to dollars and cents. The people with the most dollars can buy the election independent of what the "will" of the people is.
And setting up wars to suit companies, be they failing or not is nothing new, just read this and you'll have everything explained to you:
http://www.addictedtowar.com/
With hopes there will be a papertrail next time...
However, if just one such error occured in each of Ohio's counties (88) then Bush would have 88 extra votes.
How do these third parties check that the source code they audit is the code used to generate the binaries on the voting machines? When reviewing the software at binary level, how do they know the software doesn't simply work one way during all other days than election day, and otherwise on election day? Why are these independent, third-party reviews secret?
Transparency is extremely important. In a voting system, it's imperative. I can't understand why this is even a question.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
And those measures were put on the ballot in those states thanks to the mayor of San Francisco and the Mass. Supreme Court making declarations on same-sex marriages last spring. Had those things not happened, these measures (while perhaps still on the ballot) would not have drawn out those voters.
There's no need to have a devious plan when your oppenents do poorly thought out things - and that cuts both ways.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
What gives the right to the United States to "help" other countries to put a Democratic government, if in the United States itself has NO democracy? Hypocrisy...
Kathy would like everyone to know that the optical scan machines are of the brands "Diebold" and "ES&S". It was stated in the head article that the e-voting machines were Diebold, but that the optical scan machines were not. It has also been stated in several places in this thread that there were three vendors for op-scan machines, but there were in fact only two.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Well, one of the complaints in CmdrTaco's list was specifically that the number of registered Democrats didn't match the number of votes for Kerry. As someone else said, there is no reason that discrepancy should be too much of a shock -- you can be pressured into registering, but voting is anonymous. Why everyone seems to ignore this, and that the same exact thing can happen in an exit poll is a mystery to me.
Are you questioning my patriotism? How dare you!
Shows a lot about the Slashdot mods when a comment like that is modded funny.
The biggest problem with the US electoral system, is that there are too many voters. This leads to all kinds of statistical problems that otherwise wouldn't be significant. Combine that with a very close result, and you get uncertain results blurred by statistical noise.
I recommend going to a system described in Starship Troopers: only citizens can vote. Citizens being, of course, only those people who had served in the armed forces for a minimum of 2 years.
This solves everything, as the number of voters would drastically be reduced, but that wouldn't matter anyway as all elections would be landslide Republican wins.
So why did I register Democrat this time? The reason was a no-brainer: All but one of the local Republicans were running uncontested in the primaries! And let's face it, Bush's nomination was a sure thing in the Republican primaries. The Democratic candidate wasn't yet determined. Because of this, there was no logical reason to register Republican this time around, at least here in Gahanna, Ohio.
I had a funny feeling my friends online would blame me for skewing the Democratic party's predictions. :)
democrats are being sore losers. why would republicans be sore winners.
Sorry - you're right, too many previews and edits causes typos. Obviously you got my point.
- passion
I can't imagine how you could draw this conclusion. The Evoting systems in use today mostly have NO AUDIT TRAIL, aside from writing the vote count into two different data tables. Both the voting terminals and the central vote counting software run on Windows PCs and use standard MDB (Access-type) databases that are not encrypted. The software is closed source and is "certified" by commercial labs who have no published standards, who do not evaluate security issues, and whose results are trade secrets available only to the company who makes the machines (and pays for the test). See BlackBoxVoting.org for details of how this testing works.
The big difference between these systems and traditional systems is auditability--on the old systems, there is a paper ballot, which gives the ability to go back later and try to detect fraud. In E-voting systems fraud can rarely be detected because the only "record" is a value stored in a read/write disk file that supposedly reflects a real-time event (the voter making their choice).
This is not to say that it isn't possible to do computer based voting securely, but the system design must start with auditablilty as a priority. See the system they designed at OpenVotingConsortium.org which is an open source, low cost, simple system that give most of the benefits of E-voting (like ease of use, results checking, access for the disabled, etc.) without the risks of electronic tallys. How? They use the computer's touchscreen interface to produce a printed, barcoded ballot which becomes the only official record of the vote. These ballots are pre-checked for consistency before they are cast (no overvotes), are near-guaranteed machine readable (no hanging chads or stray marks) and can be verfied manually to ensure that the printed choices match the barcodes that are used to tally the votes.
For the nTH time this is not a democracy. It is a representive republic.
Looks like you need to get something straight: There's no such thing as a "representative republic," you idiot. We are a representative democracy, which is arguably synonymous with "republic." Who's the "looser" now?
Ignorance makes MutantHamster want smash.
My Greatest Heist - Muisc partly inspired by the unbeatable Qwantz
And lest you come back with the "brainwashed minion" argument, let me tell you that these proud men are intelligent and informed. Remember, they have access to the same information you do. Being able to read is a prerequisite to admission to the military. They just happen to have a level of dedication and discipline and devotion to duty that few of your ilk have.
You have your choice. You can sit with your tin hat and think there is some great conspiracy to rob you of your predestined victory, or you can stop and really try to understand that the United States of America is greater by far than the low-life tricks that a very few of both sides of the spectrum try to hoist into the process.
Exit polls don't mean much though, democrats tend to be much more vocal and may actually flock to the exit pollers.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Oh, you mean a crazy thing called a 'reciept'?
If you wrote on that sticky note in pen and it is in a locked box, it IS safer than on a Windows computer with Access.
Still doesn't mean the allegations shouldn't be investigated.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
the trend holds across counties that use the same machine type, so if "conservatives are simply 'conservative' when it comes to agreeing to participate in exit polls" you'd expect them to be so in all polls, not just areas where they electronically voted.
... registered demo's who vote republican. aparently the way their votes are tabulated this year has a similar distribution as 2000. ...but i didnt check their numbers, so i havnt made up my mind...
"conservatives are simply 'conservative' when it comes to agreeing to participate in exit polls when they voted electronically" doesnt make much sense.
though i understand from dailykos's discussion about this that these districts were largely "dixiecrat's"
tasty electronic music vittles
Yeah, they took their crack and went home.
It's over. Bush won. Deal with it. We had to put up with Clinton for 8 years.
Dear Sir,
People like you are the only chance the Democrats have of ever being a viable political party again, and for the sake of America, I hope you can win your party back from the nutjobs. We are far better off as a nation with (at least) two parties representing the relatively minor differences in mainstream Western political thought.
Sincerely,
A Republican who thinks reasonable people can disagree reasonably.
Democrats in denial continue to try and find anything they can lay their hot little hands on to destroy George W. Bush. All rumors, unsubstantiated gossip, and half-baked "truths" will be trumpted to the highest in the hopes that some of it, no matter how ludicrous or absurd, will somehow stick to the President.
One wonders just how much scrutiny the voting system would be under if Kerry had won. One further wonders if this story would've even made it to Slashdot had it been the Republicans complaining about voting irregularities.
Bush won. Kerry lost. Get over it and start planning the next election. Perhaps next time you'll pick a better candidate. I would've voted for Lieberman had you nominated him, but you chose a left-wing flip-flop instead.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I know that it is probably paranoia but I really worry that the results of a fully electronic voting system could be manipulated without our knowledge. Without something material that could be counted, I will always feel some nagging doubt about the results.
But like I said, it is probably paranoia.
I think now may be the time to remind all you Americans that your constitution specifically grants you the right to bear arms as part of a militia just in case your government gets too powerful and starts seizing powers that it has no right to.
I'm just pointing that out, thats all. It's in your constitution.
I'll get ready for that visit from the police now.
Steve.
A latent existence
I haven't drawn any conclusions from the Florida oddities. But having seen them, I'd like them to be studied. I've run enough T-tests in my time to know from eyeballing the e-voting / scan dichotomy that it hase an extremely low likelihood of coming from chance. Who knows, maybe they'll all clear up as easily as Palm Beach County did. Let's not jump to conclusions; let's find out the facts.
By the way, just to clear something up, if you have a hypothesis beforehand, and your stats say it is very unlikely to have to have come about by chance (low p-value), then you may be on the road to drawing some scientific conclusions.
But. If you calculate some low p-values after the fact, then, as a scientist, all you can say is it may be worth investigating further. It may be fairly simple to pose a new hypothesis (such as "I hypothesize that the exit polling in Florida will correlate with registrations in all counties; not just e-voting counties the way the election outcome correlated.") But you can't jump to conclusions on a post-facto hypothesis.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Speaking to "the haves and the have-mores." George W. smirks: "Some people call you the elite, I call you my base"
This was said at a dinner where people typically make fun of themselves. Great job on the in-context quoting!
Anyone who thinks that electors might change their votes have another thing coming.
Electors are hand picked, not by the states, but by the representative parties. These are generally party loyalists, so keyed up about their candidates that they'd vote for them even if it was proven that the election was rigged.
There have been some electors who do change their minds. Read up on "Faithless Electors". You'll notice that almost none of them changed their party allegiance to the other side, however (although a few gave their vote to an independent party). Most of them simply changed *who* they wanted as president -- in one case, for example, voting for Reagan instead of Gerald Ford.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Oh, and for future reference, your semantic hair-splitting would carry a lot more weight if you learned how to fucking spell.
... and we have a full paper trail, with automatic recounts if the results are within 100 ballots per poll, as well as any party being able to demand a recout by paying a fee..,
So, why can't you guys do it? It's not like this is a problem that needs the invention of new technology to fix.
Shit. I need mod points. Damn good job....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Of course, if those conducting the exit polls happen to want a Kerry victory, and those who conduct these polls realise that if the early results would affect voter turnout, and a few who conduct these polls were to tip off the candidate they were in favor of, and the workers of one candidate were to make a special effort to get their voters to the polls in those areas in an effort to skew those polls, doncha think that MIGHT explain the differences? Otherwise, you have to say that the non-technical Republicans were much smarter than the geek Dems at loading up electronic votes. (Remember, Kerry was favored over Bush in this forum about 4.5 to 1 and we know ALL the smartest l33ts hang out here!)
Finally, I urge you to find me one article or study that can prove that electronic voting machines - flawed as they are - are anything short of the most accurate and secure voting system we have.
Perhaps these voting devices are the most accurate machines you have (err, sorry...precise, but not necessarily accurate) today. That doesn't mean that they are as precise as they could/should be. Why are these machines being made by third parties? Why are they not transparent? You accuse Democrats of being shrill and partisan, but you refuse to acknowledge that your assertion that Diebold's CEO's comment about Ohio was nothing more than "a fundraising pitch in a letter" is somewhat ludicrous. They make VOTING MACHINES for Christ's sake.
I am not so naive as to believe that you can find someone who will have no party affiliation to make this equipment, but is a contributer to the Republican party (or Democrat party, for that matter) whose CEO alluded to voter fraud in a "fundraising" letter, no matter what the context, really the best company for the job? If that is what he is willing to say out loud, what is he really thinking?
There is probably nothing amiss here, but the point that you refuse to admit is that these actions have led people to believe there is a serious conflict of interest here. Why are you so against pursuing this?
.... setup http://electoral-vote.com/ and wrote "The United States is the oldest continuously functioning democracy in the world.", (see http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/electoral-colle ge.html) I nearly fell of my seat. ROFL.
...", then OK but saying "it is the oldest ..." .... puke, puke, puke, US nationalistic TRITE.
.....
The Iroquois League, Iceland, the Isle of Man and Switzerland all make similar claims and so Tanenbaum is a complete plonker basically. He might be OK on operating systems but his politics/history is laughable. If he had written "one of oldest
Anyway to get to my point, watching from London and seeing voting queues of 5 hours or more in some places of the US had me laughing even more. I've never waited longer than 3 minutes to cast a paper ballot here in the UK and with a paper trail as well. Electronic voting has been all but ruled out here as it's so open to fraud.
Seeing the US going headlong into electronic voting indicates to me a huge corrupt system there, out to reap profits from crap IT as well as open up very simple hacking techniques to throw elections. I believe all US citizens have been hoodwinked into using this stuff.
5 hours queues to vote - ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha LOL
democracy - ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha LOL
Don't forget to bend over now
"HA, I faaart in your jenerale direc-sion."
Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward.
Or 32767 to be exact?
So not counting ~86k kerry votes is an error in favor of Bush.
RTFA, or just keep talking out your ass. In Palm Beach County there were apparently 88,000 more votes (more votes = already counted) than voters, when they were at 98% of precincts reporting. Now that they are at 100%, they revealed that most of those votes came from absentee ballots - the number of absentee ballots went up from about 49k to 141k or so. When that update happened, there were an additional 1543 votes counted in the presidential race (not for the incumbent, as you assumed). Of those 1543 new votes, about 600 were for Bush and 950 were for Kerry (simple subtraction between the old numbers and the new), which was the same ratio as the orginal 550k votes at just under 40% Bush, just over 60% Kerry.
Ya know.. you could always just tell them it's none of their damn business. I smack people quite hard when they pester me over who I voted for in whatever election.
-What have you contributed lately?
I would not call it "devious." California, among other states, have been using ballot initiatives to encourage voter turn-out for years now.
Sure, a lot of evangelicals were motivated to get out and vote by the chance to formalize their state's legal definition of marriage to exclude gay couples... but then again, those in pro-gay-marriage groups were probably equally motivated to vote, if not more so. If civil libertarians could not match the numbers of those who want to tell other people how to live, then perhaps we are not quite the haven of secular libertarianism that some people once suspected.
Disclaimer: I voted for Bush, and am a practicing Christian, but would have voted against such an initiative if my state had one. Like V.P. Cheney, I'm one of those Republicans in the "freedom means freedom" camp. What other people do at home has nothing to do with me.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I had this post open when it was first posted, and just came back to refresh. I saw the description change, without an editors comment. I think that this was the new string "the Touchscreen counties", perhaps it was Diebold before? Anyone got a cached copy?
/. ops.
Note I am not suggesting anything clandestine, but I would like to know if the (mother)post was edited, and not attributed to a
It's certainly troubling to me - I've heard many times that exit polls tend to favor Democrats by 2 or 3 percent because some people don't like to admit they voted Republican (a strange concept if you ask me - why would vote one way, then be ashamed of it 5 minutes later, and not willing to divulge that information
The opposite happens here in Texas. People come out saying they voted Republican when they actually voted Democrat. I guess it depends on where you are and who your friends are as to what you'll say you voted.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I'm not being a troll here, but it would be interesting to know why you behaved this way? If the "Kerry fanatics" could ramble on for hours trying to change your mind, why couldn't you give a valid and informed reason why you like Bush that would hold water with anyone of average intellect? Even though it would've been a headache for you, do you think your opinion is that unimportant?
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
What exactly is reprehensible about challenging and verifying America's voting procedures and results? I don't see any possible harm from the challenge, and I see a potential benefit that could come from inconsistantsies being brought to light.
For instance: "According to the official election results posted on the Palm Beach County election website, 542,835 ballots were cast for a presidential candidate while only 454,427 voters turned out for the election (including absentee). This leaves a discrepancy of 88,408 votes cast for the presidential candidates."
The above strikes me as a problem with our voting system. Problems such as these will never be corrected if there's no one challenging and verifying the election results.
P.S. Yes, I know that Palm Beach county has apparently accounted for the discrepancy by adding the absentee and provisional ballots to that 454,427 number. But if there's no one asking why the numbers didn't originally add up, then we'll never know if there's a problem.
@ASP.NET's parent-teacher meeting: "Little Johnny.NET is very bright, but he doesn't play well with others."
Being a non-American, I know that bush won by 2%, but I don't know what the actual numbers are (voters for any particular candidate). How many voting mistakes/alterations would have to be made for that 2% to become 0% or -2%
you evidently didn't read about the fact that Bush has limited access to his website to people in the US only..
....and you evidently missed the discussion that followed in that thread, where people that (I presume) know more about the technology involved than I do suggested that it is cheaper to guarantee access to a site on one continent than it is wordwide, and that this fact may have been a factor. It serves no political benefit to limit the reach of one's message. Finances, when one considers the last weeks going into a hotly-contested political campaign, are are another matter.
Does he have anything to hide? Like the blatant truth maybe?
You've GOT to be kidding. A political website (especially one geared up for a campaign) is most definitely out to make the candidate look as good as possible. This fact is most evident in Kerry's website, where vital facts relevant to Kerry's military record were missing. Kerry said that he was so proud of his service now, 30 years after he accused American servicemen in Vietnam of being nothing shy of war criminals. What does he have to hide?
we shouldn't be there in the first place!
Strictly opinion. I believe that we should be there. I know several people that are in Baghdad now, and they agree. Where is your perspective coming from? Safely on American soil, never to fear striding Iraqi land, searching for terrorist factions?
Why can't Americans just take the facts and analyze them without the comments from politicians which are obviously biaised?
Why, indeed. I manage. It just pisses me off when complete gits think that it is impossible to look at the facts and arrive at a different opinion than they do. People may not agree with me, and that's fine. Anti-war folk seem to have a real hard time accepting the possibility that they might actually be wrong.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
When was the last time you read a security briefing warning you to unplug the modem from your lockbox of paper receipts to prevent hackers who knew the phone number of the box from dialing in and changing all of the numbers in your locked box?
You do a nice job of making classic document storage sound childish or quaint, but the fact is, it IS more secure to write stuff down on paper and put it in a locked box than it is to store the data on read/write media connected to a public network.
Okay, okay... I want all the Kerry supporters to move to the west side of the Mississippi, and all the Bush supporters to the east. Minor candidates can have their choice of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, or Alaska. Once you've selected your geographic region, please refrain from changing your mind or going back to your home state.
Now, wait for the census.
See? Completely accurate voting, and everyone is happy; the blues who want to go to Canada now have their own country, the reds who are tired of hearing the blues cry are now free of them, and the minor candidates each get their own territory to run, as well.
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
vvnm.org/resources/florida2004/florida_vote_patter ns.htm
Yes the patterns show a strong significance. it screams at you.
The conclusion is not what you are expecting though.
1) First Bush Won Florida On optical scan machines, kerry won on e-voting
2) e-voting agreed with the exit polls, optical scan did not
3) The key finding of the above article is that people vote DIFFERENTLY on optical scan and e-Voting.
THIS LAST FACTOR IS HUGELY IMPORTANT!!!! Assuming No hanky panky is involoved this may be due to the human-machine interface--a factor that has gone unexplored.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
vvnm.org/resources/florida2004/florida_vote_patter ns.htm
read it, be informed. It was written by an actual scientist! imagine.
how ironic - the story was about George W Bush and the advert below was for doom
"citizens can vote. Citizens being, of course, only those people who had served in the armed forces"
If you did not serve I presume then that you can't either serve in political office because you are not a citizen. Then almost only democrats can fill the job.
Democrats:
* Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
* David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
* Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
* Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
* Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
* Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
* John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.
* Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
* Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam.
* Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
* Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
* Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91. v * Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
* Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal. v * Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
* Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
* Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
* Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
* Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
* Chuck Robb: Vietnam
* Howell Heflin: Silver Star
* George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
* Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311. v * Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
* Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
* John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters. v * Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg. v
Republicans -- and these are the guys sending people to war:
* Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
* Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
* Tom Delay: did not serve.
* Roy Blunt: did not serve.
* Bill Frist: did not serve.
* Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
* Rick Santorum: did not serve.
* Trent Lott: did not serve.
* John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
* Jeb Bush: did not serve.
* Karl Rove: did not serve.
* Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
* Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
* Vin Weber: did not serve.
* Richard Perle: did not serve.
* Douglas Feith: did not serve.
* Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
* Richard Shelby: did not serve.
* Jon! Kyl: did not serve.
* Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
* Christopher Cox: did not serve. v * Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
* Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
* George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.
* Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
* B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
* Phil Gramm: did not serve.
* John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
* Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
* John M. McHugh: did not serve.
* JC Watts: did not serve.
* Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem," although continued in NFL for 8 years.
* Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
* Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
* George Pataki: did not serve.
* Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
* John Engler: d
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Hear, hear.
Even though I don't support Bush I support your position here. A government of the people, for the people by the people.
If the vote is corrupted, then it's a criminal matter and a disaster for a democracy.
The vote counting needs to be audited just like the likes of Enron etc.
It's Laporte, Indiana. Not Laporte, Michigan.
The News Dispatch is a Michigan City newspaper. Michigan City is in Indiana, 7 miles from the Michigan border.
Lots of people get that wrong.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
For the love of Jefferson, will someone please tell the British press that Democrat is a noun and not an adjective? Every friggin time they talk about US politics, it's "Democrat candidate John Kerry" or "Democrat Senator from South Dakota."
It's the Democratic party and the Republican party. A Republican politician is a Republican. A Democratic politician is a Democrat.
I'm over here doing *my* part, telling people not to refer to the United Kingdon as "England." But does anybody say thanks? Noooo....
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
don't forget we're only catching a tiny amount of those anomalies... if we had more, Kerry would've won.
.... WOULD have won ? Or MIGHT ?
DISCLAIMER: Not american. Anti-Bush, Pro-Kerry.
Still
Maybe because I live outside USA, I have a different impression. Even tho I nearly got depressed when I saw Bush won, I can't say I was surprised. Unless there is some sex scandal or some sort, americans in general tend to support their current president almost blindly. And Bush IS the current president.
That is a problem with most (all?) government systems. It is very easy to handle the information given to the masses. Even if you keep the information true, you can still change it ever so slightly just to give a different feeling.
Take the invasion of Iraq. Was it done to stop the terrorism ? Pfft. Then why Iraq and not Libia ? Was it done to take away Iraq's WMD ? Pfft. Then why Iraq and not North Korea ? Or Parkistan, for that matter. Yes, it is still true that some terrorists came from Iraq, and that Iraq had some nasty weapons. True, but the information is manipulated to provide a different feeling.
Would Kerry be a better president than Bush from my point of view ? I hoped so. Certain ? Nope. One can never tell.
How about the whole election process ? How easy is it to remove someone from the valid voters list ? Someone who stole a candy 10 years ago can't vote. And even if they vote, what is the real weight of that vote ? USA has an electoral college, and those are the votes that count. Here we call it "indirect ellections". It really reminds me of that old saying: "Every person is equal, but some are more equal than others".
All the manipulation needed to change the outcome of an election in USA can be done before a single vote is cast. It is easier, cheaper, and much more harder to trace. Why care about Diebold's crappy machines ?
Damn liberals!
Why are these machines being made by third parties?
As opposed to the government? Thats your choice. Government made. Or privately made. Choose your gun. I'll take a publically traded company in an industry of 5-10 competitors over the government any day.
Why are they not transparent?
They are transparent. Well Diebold is because they publically owned.
that your assertion that Diebold's CEO's comment about Ohio was nothing more than "a fundraising pitch in a letter" is somewhat ludicrous
What was it then? You really think he was saying "give us your donations, I am going to steal the election illegally using my voting machines (which I already sold to Ohio, by the way)?" Get real man. It was a fundraising pitch. Not a grand conspiracy that he accidentally let slip to 200,000 of his closet friends!
They make VOTING MACHINES for Christ's sake.
They make voting machines as 1% of their business. It's a big company, publically traded, and they make THOUSANDS of other devices. It's one segment of a big business. Really man. Get a grip. Somehow you hold this notion that the CEO of a large publically traded company formed a conspiracy to vote rig a battleground state and do so with no smoking gun and very cleverly, knowing that it'd come all down to Ohio, and in the process he accidentally forgot to keep it secret. It was all part of his diabological plan, I tell you.
If that is what he is willing to say out loud, what is he really thinking?
There isn't a person in the country who does't have a political opinion. I never said there wasn't a conflict of interest, but this one statement made by a lifelong avowed public Republican openly about "delivering Ohio's electroal votes" to the President hardly is evidence of a grand conspiracy that would be the mostly shocking, most widespread, and most sinister that the nation has ever seen. That is what you are suggesting. That there was this big conspiracy and that he just forgot to not mention it in his letter. Right.
Do what ever you want. But the voting machines used this election are the most accurate ever in the history of the country.
I run a precinct, and we don't ask for ID either. If your name isn't already on our list, or if it is crossed out (already voted or listed as absentee) then we file your vote away as "provisional" and it is signature-verified manually by the county before being counted. Additionally, any crook could manufacture a photo ID; asking for one won't stop a determined cheater, just slow the process down.
It is the expectation of near-immediate results that is stupid. I didn't say it couldn't be done .. I'm saying that when efficiency (accuracy divided by speed) is prioritized over accuracy itself, you trade off accuracy for speed. There is no good reason to make this trade.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Were you trying to be funny when you spelld "syllable" rong?
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
people don't line up in the rain for nine hours to tell the president what a good job he is doing.
Read the article in the parent post. It contains actual information as opposed to the ravings found elsewhere.
I'll say what I say everyone time some dick complains about it:
Much truth is said in gest
It was a white tie dinner full of rich fat cats and the fact is they are his base. They give him buckets of money to campaign, he gives them huge tax breaks, interest free loans(from our tax dollars), tax dollar giveaways(a.k.a. "Medicare Reform"), relaxed environmental regulations and on and on.
Its my sig because George just had the poor judgement to say something, in gest, that is taboo to say, the wealthy elite own the government and they own politicians on both sides of the aisle. Its just another case of the poor judgement that is his calling card. It was right up there with his skit with the slides where he is "looking for the WMD's" and can't find any. Well more than 1100 American soldiers died looking for those non existent WMD's, thousands more are maimed for life and there are tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi's who are dead and maimed too, and the tally is going up everyday and will for a really long time. Funny joke.
@de_machina
Maybe he felt it just isn't worth arguing over anyway, since the Pro-Kerry fanatics won't accept dissenting opinion. I know if I was asked I'd probably say I voted for Kerry so I dont have to have cow blood thrown at me or something.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
...the next 4 years that is...
Had Kerry won Ohio, I wonder how many people who criticized Bush's electoral win would be similarly criticizing Kerry right now.
Yes, I know. -1, Troll/Flamebait. Hypocrites.
But Bush is not defending the Constitution he is attacking it.
Article I. Free Speach zones & domestic intelegence on political groups.
Article II. Misuse of the National Guard as regular military rather than milita.
Article IV, V, & VI. Guantimo, the Patriot Act, & etc.
To sum it up in respose to the 9/11 defense of these acts let me say in the words of Ben. Franklin, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
What matters is that some voting machines have been deployed with no paper trail, which makes detecting either glitches or outright fraud impossible other than by guessing based on exit polls.
With paper ballots that are scanned by machine (like Wake County, NC's), at least it is possible to conduct a manual recount after the fact, to check up on the machine / software. Some places actually do an automatic manual recount on some small percentage of (randomly selected) precincts for this purpose.
Also, people need to have confidence in the integrity of the elections process (which these efforts help provide), or else our government has no legitimacy.
It was one CEO making a fundrasing pitch in a letter!
Go check this to see where the sympathies of the voting machine companies lie. Any claims of non-partisanship on the part of the companies should be viewed with extreme skepticism.
the company in question makes about 1% of its profit from voting machines, is very transparent and publically traded. Hardly a good candidate for fruad
Best kind of candidate, if you think about it. How much money they make is a non-issue. I don't care how much they make - what I'm worried about is how they handle the election.
This type of question has been around for 200 years.
Sure. But now we can ask it loudly until someone actually answers the damn question! We have at our hands a tool to make sure it gets in front of as many faces as possible. So why not use it?
The more shrill you side gets the more offended, turned off, and disgusted the middle 20% of votes in the country get.
So, what? Just shut up and take it? In case you hadn't noticed, moderation doesn't go over with this administration. Bush was the one who said "You are either with us, or against us." So, I'm coming down on the side specifically against him and his fellow Republiban.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Consider that it may actually come out for the best (worldwide) that Bush won the election.
Here is my preception of the difference between the two candidates:
- Kerry - Wants to gather a world accord to move the nation and the world forward.
- Bush - Wants to invade every nation that doesn't do what USA wants.
Now lets consider for a moment how world history has gone.
1 - people exist in anarchy
2 - despot forces them into servitude
3 - in order to maintain position of power despot begins granting people rights / services
4 - people get used to rights, force out dictator
5 - democracy can happen as human rights slowly begin to hold sway over dictator's desires.
The point I try to make here is that you can not skip from step 1 or 2 to step 5. That's why "Nation Building" seems to be working so poorly. Take the average 3rd world, messed up / anarchic goverment citizen and say to him "Hey. You should pay me to make your life better. In fact, you should not even have the choice to not pay me. I'll just take the money out of your paycheck and you can go to jail if you don't like it. Whadya think?" He says: "Fuck off." These days he says "Jihad!! IEEEEEE*BOOM*" but that's just an artifact of which messed up / anarchic government set we're working with. What you need to do is take yer anarchist and force him into line with a monarchy for a few years where you can smack him around for a while when he makes like he's going to disrupt the social contract. Once he's learned that being part of a functional society is nice then you can let him have a democracy.
So. Let's build an analogy:
Countries exist in a state of international anarchy. So we take a goverment and say to them "You should sacrifice money and soverenity to Agency X to make the world a better place." They say one of two things:
1) Fuck off.
b) OK! We'll have the UN or something and it'll sound really sweet, but nobody will really be willing to submit and it's effectiveness will be hamstrung.
So what you perhaps need to do is get some nation that is pretty tough to be like "Hey all you nations. Get in line or we'll come over there and show you what happens to people who keep screwing up our world peace." Such a nation can go around for a while knocking heads, and then someone will nuke the shit out of it (or something) and then people err nations begin to miss the services it provided and manage to actually get shit together. Or maybe if they're cool they can pull an "England" and get all MagnaCarta and give the people/nations enough consideration that they are happy without letting them fuck shit up all the time. Beats the hell outta pulling a "France", right?
So this brings me back to my preceptions of the two candidates. Maybe the Kerry-style enlightened preception of peace and prosperity for the world just can't happen without a little Bush-style head cracking, you know? Ok, a LOT of head cracking. 'Safe at home, and respected in the World'? _I'LL_ show you how to get respect! *RA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA* Wanna make an omlette, right? Let's just hope that Bush's deficit doesn't sink us first.
Now THERE'S an entertaining possible future history. Too bad I always post anon, so this will languish at 0, never seen by the masses.
*applause* For all the slinging back and forth about Air National Guard this and Swift Boat that, the real deserters of duty in this election were those that didn't turn up at the polls - no matter who they voted for, or those who don't care about their proud institutions being eroded: as long as they're being eroded in their favour.
What I don't get is why people who are so certain that there were no irregularities are opposed to independent verification of the election. If you're right and these machines don't have any problems at all, what could be so wrong with verifying their results? It would shut up most of the whiners and it would give further legitimacy to the winners. And, most importantly, it will help restore some faith in the system.
alot of the "pro kerry fanatics" are actually anti-Bush fanatics. If you could just provide them with valid counter-points, maybe we could start rebuilding the torn country. Was I misled into thinking I was misled about Iraq? These are real questions that shouldn't be too hard to answer.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
I knew this would happen, you knew this would happen, and I'm pretty sure Kerry knew this would happen. But why would he simply roll over and die less than 24 hours after the election began? Before anything was solidified? The illusion of choice. Your votes mean nothing when the candidate you cast for concedes. They shouldn't be allowed to just Give Up. Fuckers.
Here is the correct one:
Analysis of Florida Voting Patterns
enjoy.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And you wonder why you guys' candidate lost.
analysis of florida voting patterns
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Not Michigan. FYI
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
Of course, Diebold made sure that is impossible. The process is majorly flawed. This was known well in advance.
We take comfort in blaming the system, be it "fraud" or "machines" because the alternative is to realize that half of us would like to either kill or kick out of the country, the other half of our countrymen. Am I the only one who is surprised we haven't already seen an attempt at a coup d'etat or widespread violent rebellion?
The people who are complaining the loudest about problems seem to be primarily the ones who are simply not satisfied with the outcome.
Yes. I'm not satisfied with a "democratic" system where I have very little confidence that my vote was counted correctly.
If you *are* satisfied with such a system, you must not care much for the ideals of this country.
Politics for nerds. Your vote means you're the biggest sucker in the world and wouldn't know freedom if it were shoved up your ass.
Don't bitch about the system if you're the one giving it fuel.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Then we'd see some meaningful stats as the result of the election. We'd probably see GWB at 20%, Kerry at maybe 15%, and all of these third partie guys at 10% or lower. Bush still goes to the White House [...]
Let's say you did make every ballot write-in-only. If Bush got 20%, Kerry got 15%, and Badarnik and Nader each got 10%, nobody would have a majority, so the House of Representatives would decide the election. So Bush would go to the White House.
So you've succeeded in eliminating the "noise" from voters by eliminating all effects of them voting for president at all.
That sounds to me like the worst parts of a presidential system and the worst parts of a parliamentary system. The current system needs improvement, but I don't think I'd prefer your system.
I'm sorry
----
You can have my sig when you pry it from my cold dead......
"Consider that it may actually come out for the best (worldwide) that Bush won the election."
I agree, but not for reasons as complex as your analysis.
Kerry would have inherited a big mess. He would not have appeared to be successful, no matter how well he actually performed.
Bush, on the other hand, has for the first time in his LIFE, become obligated to face the consequences of his own actions.
Anyone who occupies the oval office today, has a lost cause in his hands. Better to watch Bush go down in flames, than to shackle such a legacy on some other more competent leader.
Despite the repeated asseration that "the whole world hates the US", I've seen absolutely NO meaningful opposition to the US policies. Why was no resistance mustered to forestall the invasion of Iraq? The US interpretation, of course, is that the world approves, overwhelmingly. Even those countries that supposedly don't approve, gave their consent by not fighting against it. Yeah, that would have cost lives and broken alliances. We're talking WAR already, so that's what it comes down to.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
And to use it incorrectly; the United States of America does not have, and has never had, an established church.
"The company . . . is very transparent and publically traded. Hardly a good candidate for fruad"
Yeah, everybody knows publicly traded companies have never ever engaged in fraud. You know like the Dow component Enron that subsidized Bush's first campaign. Nah, they didn't commit fraud. It was a misunderstanding.
Another vote for meeeee! Wo-ho! :)
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Liberals ! Stand up and take it like a Mandate ! I think the vote margin in Ohio was 136,000 so 4000 really doesn't, well, you can subtract. As far as the Florida vote machine alien butt probe theory ; Registered Pubs and Debs are NOT indicative of final votes. But it does say in this particular case. Elitist idiot John Kerry dised the Jew vote, FYI: that is the population of Palm Beach, they historically vote dem, thus registered dem. And they voted Bush in droves partly because of the good campaigning by Ed Koch and partly because John Kerry is a , oh already mentioned the elitist idiot.
The funny thing about that story is that of all the articles I read about that, the only thing mentioned is thousands of votes found by "republican election observers" were found. Nobody ever said who the votes were for because in actuality, they were never there in the first place. You assume since they were republican observers that they were votes for Kerry (at least I am assuming that you are since you cite Kerry, but your source doesn't say one way or another), I heard people in the media assume that election observers had found votes for Bush (Howard Stern comes to mind). Since the votes were not really there, they were votes for nobody.
One "such" error, not one error, you fucking douche
I believe one reason for this could be due to the fact that Bush did much better among Jewish Democrats this time around when compared to 2000. I remember one network pointing this out, and attributing it to how much Lieberman helped Gore, and how little credit he got for it.
A treat to eat, in a puppet that's neat!
you're right - most of them didn't care for Kerry, they just hated Bush so much that they felt anyone else was better. Sorry, but I can't vote that way. Give me a reason to vote FOR someone not AGAINST someone else. There's no reasoning with people that have such seething hatred like that. Better to just smile and walk away.
And btw, I'm not in total agreement with the way the Iraq war was handled either. But I don't place all of the blame on Bush. This was more the result of bogus intelligence imformation, which even Clinton got. Yes Bush actually acted on it, but I can't completely blame him that the info turned out to be bogus.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
No. I just complied to the rule.
If you want to see a detailed analysis and interesting primer on these voting patterns look here:
Analysis of Florida Statistics
Yes the patterns show a strong significance. it screams at you.
The conclusion is not what you are expecting though.
1) First Bush Won Florida On optical scan machines, kerry won on e-voting
2) e-voting agreed with the exit polls, optical scan did not
3) The key finding of the above article is that people vote DIFFERENTLY on optical scan and e-Voting.
THIS LAST FACTOR IS HUGELY IMPORTANT!!!! Assuming No hanky panky is involoved this may be due to the human-machine interface--a factor that has gone unexplored.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"Just because you stop youth on the street and ask them to register and they check the democrat box does mean they are going to vote for Kerry."
Actually, many of the partisan vote drives go further than that. They have *already* checked the party box for the registrant; thus, the box check has *nothing* to do with how that person intends to vote. All it demonstrates is that there were more Democrat vote drives than Republican vote drives.
I read a book about this in the early '90s. It pointed out that Democrats were living in the past. Once upon a time, it had in fact been the Democrats who did better among those who did not register to vote. However, that was because at that time, it was the Democrats who were in charge. Modernly, those who do not register lean more Republican.
This is easy enough to explain: Republicans currently hold all houses. If people wanted to change that, they would actively register to vote. Since people were not doing so, they weren't interested enough to change it. Making it easy to register them didn't change this sentiment. Thus, people who registered in vote drives were only lukewarm about the idea of change.
~ - Not to suggest that counting the votes by hand is perfectly adequate, but while the politicians are out to waste money, they might as well waste it well.
PS - an even simpler solution to tied results would of course be to get rid of the two party system and electoral voting crap and go with a parliamentary system like Canada's, but everyone knows they're a bunch of no-good commies.
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
I don't think much of the argument that the exit polls were contradicted; see the blog article, where a seasoned reporter says that they are unreliable.
However, the issue of voting machine error needs to be taken more seriously and investigated by a bipartisan committee. If the problems become common knowledge, perhaps people will become sufficiently angry that politicians will be forced to address the issue.
I won't if you won't.
No difference to what happened this year, but perhaps it could make a difference to what happens 20, 100 or 1000 years from now. There is a proverb, although I have no idea of the source, "We don't inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our children". Personally I believe damaging the planet and thereby causing suffering to our descendants in our quest for luxury is immoral. It seems the climate is changing, the weather certainly is.
I think you misunderstand. I did not suggest that Mr. Bush caused the hurricanes, that was thought up by you. I suggested that voting for someone who stands in the way of action to limit climate change when your state has just suffered what may well be the result of climate change seems illogical. If, hypothetically, I wished to blame a single person for the results of possible climate change, then I think that Mr. Bush would be fairly high on the list (Texan oil family, refusing to ratify Kyoto, leader of the world's largest polluter...).
"Most of the rhetoric in your post is easily refuted."
go ahead then, refute it. we're waiting.
So, to ease my state of mind over this, can someone point to significant errors in Kerry's favor? Surely if these are random and unrelated occurances, the distribution of who is being favored should be about equal, right?
Parent is amazing.
Is it so ridiculous when you consider that many of these machines are made by companies owned by Republicans?
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
Any statisticion would agree that it would be a stupid assumption to make.
Yes, but the poster made no such assumption. He simply stated that this is what it would be numerically.
Millions of people could have voted Libertarian, but didn't.
There are plenty of DEM/REP couples in the country. I can easily imagine a situation where someone would find it easier to lie to an exit-poller about how they voted, rather than have (another) argument with their spouse.
It was a secret ballot (for good reasons). Was it a secret poll? I doubt it.
I think it's inappropriate to refute his post with such floccinaucinihilipilification.
See this for Bev Harris's account of receiving a tip that "the news has been locked down tight."
... what? There was an angel hovering over every voting booth and tabulator holding a flaming sword to fend them off?
Here'st the logic as I see it:
1. The Bush Republican faction (not all Republicans, but the Bush folks) has shown no ethical constraint in its tactics to achieve its goals (e.g., lies about WMD evidence, Kerry's Viet Nam record, McCain's adopted child).
2. As Bev Harris's crew has demonstrated, the Diebold vote tabulators were designed (intentionally or not - although there was a known computer fraud felon on the programming team) so as to be trivial to hack.
3. Ohio and Florida have Secretaries of State who are highly-partisan Republicans; in the case of Florida working directly under the president's brother; in the case of Ohio someone who tried to disqualify voter registrations based on paper stock (which would have violated the Voting Rights Act).
4. So we're supposed to suppose that people who have the means (vulnerable technology, officials in place, no discernable ethical restraint against dishonesty), and the motive (a belief that they are doing God's will appears to predominate among them), then were restrained from manipulating the vote count because
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Huh? I never said anything about Kerry conceeding; that's irrelevant (as you pointed out). What I was saying is that it's unlikely that the absentee ballots will put Kerry within 4000 votes of Bush, which would be required for those votes to change the outcome. In other words, (conspiracy theories and vote counting errors aside) they aren't enough votes to really matter.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
and we'd have fewer military incursions.
The exit polls on cnn.com all closely resemble the final tally in Florida and Ohio.
Could it be that the exit polls y'all are referring to are inaccurate because they don't include voters that voted later in the day?
Or is CNN part of the conspiracy? (Of course!)
To all the people who replied: I trying to be informative, not speculative. All I was doing was pointing out what is at this moment, rather than what might possibly be.
But yeah, I'd be willing to bet there's a whole bunch of other errors -- we just aren't sure of them yet.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Actually I agree in part to that unintelligible liberal whiny ass rant "Bush - Wants to invade every nation that doesn't do what USA wants." I agree. In fact let's make it the goal of America to individually invade and defeat every country out there. That will prove our supremacy beyond question. Then in the future when negotiating with any country, we can say , "Didn't we kick your ass once?"
If McD's can give me a receipt for a hamburger, I ought to be able to get one for voting.
Precisely in this manner: separate the "authorized to vote" machine from the machine that collects votes.
Precisely as follows: have the biometrics machine check wheter the voter is allowed. If true, the operator gives the voter an old-fashoned punch-card (with no unique identifier) to punch with votes. After voting, put the card into a box. At the end of the day, scan all cards.
that in some counties in Ohio, well over 100% of the adults who were eligable to vote were registered?
then why did the 10000+ Democratic Party lawyers not file one claim? Especially when the elecetion was rather close? Provisional ballots should not count- if you did not register to vote properly, and its not that hard, then you do no have the right to vote.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
On the other hand, pro-war and pro-Bush seem to have a hard time admitting that they may be wrong. Why is it that even though the whole planet disagrees with the US that the US HAVE TO BE RIGHT??? I've been accused many times of being narrow minded, but in this instance, I think I'm being open-minded to what other people, who, incidentally happen to be closer to Iraq and more threatened by it's potential WMDs, have to say! I live in the US now, but looking at the media, I can understand how the public here doesn't understand basics in world politics. In fact, as soon as I get a chance, I'm getting out of this country. It claims to have the most freedoms ever, but when you look closely, it's not quite true. At least not anymore. Germany, the UK and Switzerland offer more freedom to individuals than the US. So suck that pride of yours, look at facts presented from another side and try and be just a bit critical of your own opinions.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
The electoral college needs to be abolished.
This is the United States of America. Our founding fathers believed very highly in maintaining some independence of states and the electorial college reflects this. The president is elected by the states (as voted by their citizens). This is what the founders intended (and why the 2000 supreme court decision in Gore vs. Bush was sooo wrong -- but I digress).
Now, there were only thirteen states when the constitution was inacted and now we have fifty. Plus they did not have the instantaneous communications that we have now. So, one could argue that the country (and the world) is a totally different place now and it is time to change the way we elect our president. Just understand that in doing so we are changing a significant force behind the constitution (that of state's rights). I recommend extreme caution in proceeding down that road.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
""Well more than 1100 American soldiers died looking for those non existent WMD's...". You obviously have no clue why we went to iraq. Don't say oil, because only 17% of oil comes from that area anyway."
I sure as hell do know why we went in to Iraq. We went in to it because Saddam had WMD's, and was going to use them on American cities, which is the reason I gave in first post, and which is what Bush/Cheney/Fox told us over and over again, and they never lie. It just happens there weren't any. We also went in because Saddam had ties to Al Qaida and was part of the 9/11 conspiracy. Why do I know this because Dick Cheney told me so, on Meet the Press, that it had been proven Iraqi intelligence met with the 9/11 ringleader in Prague. Unfortunately it appears it hasn't been proven and it probably didn't even happen and Saddam probably had nothing to do with 9/11. Reason three way down on the list was to bring freedom and democracy to the ragheads at the point of gun because God told George that this is what he put him on Earth and made him President to do.
Your the only one bringing up the oil angle here. I just have to go with the three reasons my President told me because he would never lie.
You probably haven't noticed but there are way more insane right wing talk show hosts, especially on radio, than there are liberal ones. I don't listen to any of them on either side, excepting Charlie Rose on PBS and I'm pretty sure he isn't insane. If anyone is insane its the right wing talk show hosts that are STILL ranting about the Clintons and seem to hate pretty much everyone and everything excepting their own. Liberal talk show hosts suck because they suck at hate filled, venomous rhetoric like its practiced by the wicked witch of the right, Ann Coulter.
@de_machina
If we didn't go to war over WMDs, then what exactly did we go to war for? I must have missed that part in all of the speeches by Bush and Powell leading up to the war.
Honestly, I'm quite curious about this.
you sir, are spot on.
17 year olds can't vote!
The fact that Bush carried the el;ection by more votes than the anomalies could have caused is utterly beside the point -- what is at issue here is _why_ these anomalies exist at all and what we can do to eliminate as many of them as possible before the next election.
Every anomaly helps undermine confidence in the electoral process, disenfranchizing the general populace; this sort of doubt can actually (under extreme circumstances and over the long term) destabilize the government.
Got mead?
"Personally I still want those 155K votes counted."
There is absolutely 0 chance of them not being counted; even if they are totally irrelevant to the result, they will still be counted. People just shouldn't expect them to change anything. If by some miracle it turned out that all 155,428 were for Kerry and at least 136,484 of them counted, Kerry would win Ohio and the election. However, I wouldn't recommend that you hold your breathe waiting for it to happen.
It is ridiculously unlikely. Even if 85% of the provisional ballots cast are counted for Kerry, he would still lose. He needs 88% plus an additional percentage point for each point Bush got. I.e. he needs an 88% *margin* over Bush. Bush getting as little as 7% of the provisional ballots would preclude Kerry from winning. Not to mention that not all of the provisional ballots will be deemed valid. It is quite possible that 15% or more of them will be rejected. That would be consistent with what happened in 2000.
It is far more likely that the Kerry will gain twenty or thirty thousand votes but still be over a 100,000 short. It's even possible that Bush will gain votes. They expect the provisional ballots to be more Kerry than Bush, but they don't actually know that.
You are, of course, assuming that there's only one county in which there was this kind of overvote.
First, we are a Constitutional (or Representative)
Republic, NOT a democracy.
Second, just because your guy lost doesn't mean
the country is going into the toilet. What it
does mean is that more people agree with me than
agree with you. Tough luck buddy!
Third, the sunshine you speak of: were you
crowing those words when the Democrats in one of
the Florida counties in 2000 went behind locked
doors to do their "recount" (while the
Republicans banged on the doors saying "let us in")?
Fourth, your shit, it stinks too dude (just like
ours does). And we have no more than you. Okay,
maybe about 3.5 million more. LOL!
Fifth, you lost! Cheese with that whine?
If the the process is so open, what has happened with Blackboxvoting.orgs FOIA request? As a matter of fact, what happened the blackboxvoting.org today?
Um... enlighten me. What happened to blackboxvoting.org today? Site appears to be up and the last news post was yesterday. What does that have to do with the process being open?
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
IEEE's P1583 team has been working to define voting system standards, and is preparing to issue a second draft.
This is what you can do
1-Sign up for IEEE membership (a good idea anyway if you're an engineer or computer professional)
2-Sign up for membership in the IEEE Standards Association
3-Sign up for balloting P1583
And then you'll really be able to influence e-Voting standards.
(Note: You don't need to be a US citizen for any of this. The IEEE is an international standards body. The need for clean elections is not limited to the USA, it applies to citizens in any country that is using or may consider e-Voting any time in the future.)
Props to slashdot for reporting on this! Only Keith Obermann has reported on this as far as I can tell, and it's rumored that he's been ordered to back off.
Once again, thank you CmndTaco and Slashdot!
"Subsidizing rural Christian lifestyle"? That's a good one. I guess you're forgetting all the various military bases and other government facilities that (with the exception of the red counties of California) aren't located in any of the Blue states because of NIMBY-ism, anti-military sentiment, and similiar nonsense. It must pain you to think of all the NASA facilities that are located there, or that 1/2 of the gasoline used in the US is refined in tye Gulf Coast states. Also, no matter where I've lived, illiteracy was always higher in the blue counties by a very wide margin. But for some reason, the Dems seem to think that all the 'red states' are like rural Arkansas under Clinton.
There is a great website that has a video about voter fraud. It is called www.bush-flipflop.com.
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -
I know of several Republicans who voted for Bush who claim to hold dear the fact that the Constitution should not be changed, especially by adding a ban on gay marriage. Unfortunately these so-called educational elites failed to pay attention when Bush was screaming for just a ban and continues to do so. These are the people who elected Bush. Not the moral majority.
And here's a simple system to eliminate the possibility of fraud.
1. Create a national database. Oh wait, one exists...Social Security Numbers.
2. Make results of all votes available to everyone via the web. This will allow anyone to check and see if the vote that they cast was actually counted as they intended. This also allows for immediate scrutiny to verify the results.
3. Investigate all "anomolies". Don't leave anything to chance. In the real world there shouldn't be any anomolies with an election system. If there are then there is an obvious issue.
Did you notice that Bush got 667% of the votes in Columbus in the Ohio-incident?
666... is somebody trying to say something?
You only need a majority in the EC, not in the popular vote.
Thats michigan city, LaPorte County, Indiana. Not LaPorte Michigan. Notice in the article that they were going to confirm with Indianapolis about the results.
in my county at the point that that the precinct was reported as 100% counted. In our case, the Sequoia e-voting machines were counted immediately, but the sheer unexpected volume of paper votes (which were optional) and mail-in absentee ballots exceeded the personnel available. So while the precinct was called 100% counted, the reality was that less than 60% actually were. In our case, however, this is a solidly liberal county and Kerry won - so you won't read about our troubles anywhere but locally.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
I and every other republican voted for Bush because we support facism. We WANT a one party state. We want to combine church and state. We want to change the constitution. John Kerry is just too liberal to get anything done.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
This is why you count the votes and [i]then[/i] call the race. It's what the rest of the world does.
help America Vote Act - nuff said
permanent war - straight out of the book - The permanent war undergirds every aspect of Big Brother's authoritarian program, excusing censorship, propaganda, secret police, and privation. In other words, it's terribly convenient...
infallable leader
on and on and on. The clean air and water act lowers specific standards on clean air and water, giving us on paper more clean air and water at the stroke of a pen
This "good steward" has been universally condemned as the worst president on the environment ever
http://www.msxnet.org/orwell/
Federal taxes should not exist at all. We need to shrink the size of government. Federal taxes just arent required anymore. All we need now is state taxes.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
And when your signed int overflows at 32,768, it starts counting backwards... sounds familiar...
On typical modern systems 'int' has a range up to a bit over 2 billion. However, the C and C++ language specs only require 16 bits for 'int'.
A 16-bit signed int would go up to 32,767 (not 32,768).
You surely know that both of them have been at Yales, but do you know they both members of Skull & Bones? This election means nothing.
great, but the article is on election results IN FLORIDA.
Actually, the article summary talked about election results in Columbus, Ohio, which is located in Franklin county and accounts for the majority of that county's registered voters. That is also why the grandfather post mentioned the Franklin county results.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I think you've just been slashdotted : )
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Those are state not federal taxes. Federal taxes should not exist. Social security should be destroyed. How else can we shrink the size of federal government?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
It is naive to think we'll ever have a perfect ballot count in any election. There will always be some results that appear to be in error, some that are fraudulent (like the Chicago cemetery voting for JFK), and some that are simply statistical anomalies but are not the result of either of the former.
Whether or not the actual outcome was good, it is at least fortunate the election was not close enough for the aforementioned variances to make a difference, or we'd have a mess like the 2000 election. Essentially Gore and Bush battled to a statistical tie in that election. There was no reliable way to insure undervotes, overvotes, hanging chads, non-votes, etc. were properly counted as it required too much inference from potentially biased vote counters. So we had to go with the official numbers. But make no mistake about it -- they probably could have found just as many anomalous ballots in other counties that went against Gore.
The fact is, there is a percentage of people out there who are completely incapable of following even the simplest instructions. It's only magnified when an election's margins are razor-thin. The irony is the least competent of our voters ended up being the potential deciding votes. How scary is that?
The ultimate goal is to reduce the size and influence of federal government. We don't need federal taxes. Even liberals like you don't need federal taxes. California does not need the federal government. Look at the tax chart http://stopwelfare.com/
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
and some even stated their intentions to do everything they could to give Bush the election.
One life-long Republican supporter of one company pledged to support Bush and deliver Ohio to Bush. All of the sudden this taken as sometype of public admission that he was going to steal the election.
In the 2000 campaign the person who's job it was to certify the vote in Florida also happend to be the head of the Republican campaign in the state. I don't know, and I really don't care if major Democrat supporters certify the vote in other states. I don't know and don't care if it's currently legal (presumebly it is) for major partisans to certify votes. I don't care if Katherin Harris and the CEO of Seybol were and are completely fare people. I don't care whether Republicans _or_ Democrats feel that they can count votes in a completely unbiased manner.
All I really care about is that people responsible for counting and certifying the vote _should_ be non-partisan. And that _should_ be required by law. It _should_ be required that they neither campaign for, donate to, or publically state an opinion about any political party for the time that they sell machines/count votes/certify elections and for a reasonable period of time both before and after they do those things. This _should_ be part of the constitution.
Now why don't you all stop arguing about how things _are_ and start working toward making things as they _should_ be. Or maybe you can give me a damn good reason _why_ political activists foxs have any role whatsoever in guarding the hen houses that are our ballot boxes.
TW
There were a ton of groups ready to swoop in and challenge result they didnt agree with.
That's the true story here. These types of actions are reprehensible.
damn those non-believers!
They will burn and hell and then they will know that electronic voting is great!
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
I am really surprised that I am not hearing more people talk about open source voting software. Clearly its a much more effective system that what we have now. Clearly we are going to need an organization to help overcome the lobbyist power of the voting machine companies. I know of one (http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/) that has had a few successes in legislature including a law in California which requires voter-verifiable paper ballots to be printed. They do seem to be desparately low on funding though...maybe some /.'ers could help out? Does anybody know of another organization that is promoting something similar?
Everything is working perfectly. Trickle down economics are not designed to influence the economy, the tax cuts are designed to shrink the size of government. Federal taxes should not exist anymore. PERIOD. Why do we need federal taxes?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
According to Greg Palast's site, the spoilage rate is more like 3% for the entire US.
However high your percentage chance of survival is, it doesn't mean shit if you come home in a box. Neither Bush nor Kerry was offering good enough odds to get me to fight their wars for them.
And lest you come back with the "brainwashed minion" argument, let me tell you that these proud men are intelligent and informed...[t]hey just happen to have a level of dedication and discipline and devotion to duty that few of your ilk have.
A soldier can call it dedication, discipline, pride, duty, or whichever words sit with him the best, but they're still just words, and a politician's words at that. At the end of the day, if his number's up, that soldier will be just as dead. I'm sorry, but if you're willing to get machinegunned over a handful of meaningless words, spoken by a man who stands to profit from your death, then you are neither intelligent nor informed.
No matter how noble the cause, no matter how moving the speech, no matter how lofty the ideal, no matter which politician's words you die for, you'll still taste the same to the worms. People who don't understand that probably deserve to fertilize some foreign soil with their blood. I'm a bit jealous that pretty words like "discipline" and "duty" will be used in their eulogies, but I'll still be breathing. Maybe I don't have the right level of dedication, but I'll take being alive and ashamed over proud and dead any day of the week.
You have your choice. You can sit with your tin hat and think there is some great conspiracy to rob you of your predestined victory, or you can stop and really try to understand that the United States of America is greater by far than the low-life tricks that a very few of both sides of the spectrum try to hoist into the process.
There are more than two parts in a spectrum. Also, the portions of a spectrum are distinguishable from one another. "Spectrum" is therefore a woefully inappropriate word to use when describing our political system. America has been spiraling down the toilet for some time now, and both parties have demonstrated that they don't give a fuck as long as the money keeps rolling in.
Congratulations on your puppet winning the show this year. I'm glad that half the population will be able to feel good about their complacency and obedience for the next four years, and it's certainly comforting to know that our soldiers won't be dying for the wrong candidate.
What does this have to do with trickle down? This guy is a defense contractor working on a JD. He's interested in trickle up, not down, and for folks in that kind of an income bracket, Bush's policies have been a great success.
the one where the 4000 Bush votes happened being more an exception than a rule.
Franklin County isn't using "e-voting" machines. They're electronic, but it's stuff from 1992 that's likely implemented in bare logic. No touchscreens, databases, or any of that. The votes are recorded simultaneously on 8 cartridges, one of which is removable to be taken to the counting area.
The cartridge apparently read out wrong on Election Day. Later, when it was checked, it was fine. Hmm. I wouldn't suspect the machine - I would suspect the person who put the cartridge in. It's hard to imagine that this couldn't also have been done with paper ballots with the people who actually read off the values or record the ballots.
Hey CMDR Taco, La Porte is in Indiana, and so is Michigan City. we are on lake michigan but no in Michigan.
one wonders about dick morris' claim in TFA that exit polls are "never" wrong.
back when jesse jackson was running for president the margin between the exit polls and the actual vote count was usually fairly substantial, due to the fact that no one really wanted to admit that they hadn't voted for him.
wonder if the same went for kerry?
as far as the possibility of actual fraud, I would say that regardless of whether it changes the actual outcome of the election, EVERY report of potential fraud should be investigated. there is always the posssiblity (however remote) that some fraud was perpetrated, it might just have easily been done badly too.
me personally, I miss the really honkin' big voting machines that we used to have where I grew up. the enormous lever, the little x's. they are generally held to be very hard to screw with, and they are generally left un-reset until the next election in order to facilitate recounts.
and as far as recounts go, there should ALWAYS be a recount. regardless of result, no one whould be in that much of a hurry to get the results. the office doesn't change hands for another 2 months anyway.
does anyone else here remember douglas adams' remark about the true role of the president? makes you wonder.
cheers all
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
This staggers belief.
There is an enormous anomaly of 600,000+ votes in Bush's favour, which doesn't exist in e-voting results.*
Kerry lost by 377,216. Considering Kerry winning Florida would have made him President, THAT'S how big this issue is.
Now both Diebold and ES&S (and Sequoia) machines show a similar GIANT anomaly.
I presume these machines scanned real voter cards which still exist in sealed boxes somewhere?
If so, PLEASE demand a hand count...
*
For Florida Opscan machines
Rep: 1,337,242 expected, 1,950,213 voted
Dem: 1,432,425 expected, 1,445,675 voted
Sounds extremely stringent to me. I feel safe.
And it would only have taken 66,000 people to switch from Bush to Kerry to have won it for Kerry, so you could say Bush only won by convincing 66,000 undecideds to vote for him instead of Kerry.
Moo.
We used to use scantron-type ballots here in Maryland (using a black marker instead of pencil).
Very simple, and even clearer than most "real" scantrons -- each choice was printed directly on the card beside its corresponding "bubble" (actually more of a "complete the arrow" deal).
This year, however, over the protests of many experts we switched to the new touchscreen Diebold devices. Subsequent challenges were also shot down.
As someone who had been following the Diebold fiasco for a while, I felt like crying.
DNA just wants to be free...
4000 DETECTED wrong votes.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
At least Cthulhu says he's out to get you and everyone you know killed, and then goes out and does it!
Thanks, that's what I was trying to say in the first place! I don't understand why everybody thinks I'm being partisan or that I should speculate about other errors or something.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
and thanks for your reasoned tone, but I would disagree with your statement that "It's the responsibility of the government and municipalities to demand hardware that provides what they need (i.e., a paper audit trail)". I'd say it's the responsibility of anyone bothered about the effectiveness or otherwise of their vote. The municipalities just pass the message on.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Dude. He wasn't responding to you.
see subject.
Exit polls only work if the sample is random. Maybe the pollsters were old men who only talked to girls in their early 20's. Maybe all the Bush voters told the pollsters to go fuck themselves. Who knows.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Parents a Troll?!? wtf, mods?
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
The Democrats and the gun control nuts overlap in a large way.
Oh the irony.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
"Don't let them see us. Don't tell them what we are doing--"
Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth?
"For God's sake don't let that Coca-Cola thing out--"
"Not The Cancer Deal with The Venusians--"
"Not The Green Deal--Don't show them that--"
"Not The Orgasm Death--"
"Not the ovens--"
Listen: I call you all. Show your cards all players. Pay it all pay it all pay it all back. Play it all pay it all play it all back. For all to see. In Times Square. In Picadilly.
"Premature. Premature. Give us a little more time."
Time for what? More lies? Premature? Premature for who? I say to all these words are not premature. These words may be too late. Minutes to go. Minutes to foe goal--
"Top Secret--Classified--For The Board--The Elite--The Initiates--"
Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? These are the words of liars cowards collaborators traitors. Liars who want time for more lies. Cowards who can not face your "dogs" your "gooks" your "errand boys" your "human animals" with the truth. Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people anywhere who offer you a body forever. To shit forever. For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere. You want the name of Hassan i Sabbah on your filth deeds to sell out the unborn?
What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you: "the word." Alien Word "the." "The" word of Alien Enemy imprisons "thee" in Time. In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. The great skies are open. I Hassan i Sabbah rub out the word forever. If you I cancel all your words forever. And the words of Hassan i Sabbah as also cancel. Cross all your skies see the silent writing of Brion Gysin Hassan i Sabbah: drew September 17, 1899 over New York.
--William Burroughs, Nova Express
... it can be proved that there was wide-spread election fraud in many states and that Kerry should even have won the Florida vote? How can this change anything now? Somehow, at this late stage, I don't see the government declaring the outcome of the elections null and void no matter what is proved.
That's great and all, but Ohio wasn't using Diebold machines.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
The only point that is really worth nothing here is that Americans, like the rest of us, are nothing but sheep. It is not the land of the free, it never was. There is no such thing. American, Canadian, Indian, Japanese...we're all the same.
Bush got in again because he cheated (again). That is not a mystery. To claim otherwise would be naive. America's very life style is what permits this sh*t to happen. Suck it up and move along.
HELP THEM LEAVE is a 501(c)3 organization that feels your pain. We understand your outrage and your feelings that you can't live in a country with George W. Bush as President. For all who qualify, We provide free transportation to selected partner countries for those wishing to leave the United States. Visit our website at http://helpthemleave.com/ for more information or to make a reservation.
In some of these "interesting results" the op-scan ballots were fed into machines which scanned them, then did things like subtract extra votes.
Some of these ballots and machines produced circumstances of N registered voters and N+X (where X is positive) votes recorded. [This is as likely to have been stuffing by humans as mechanical error.]
In may of the criticisims, the problem is not that the "ballots" were "misintrpreted" but that the data path from the big box (into which you fed your paper) to the BIG BOX where all the numbers were recorded over modems and flash-card-insertion, were NOT SECURE and NOT AUDITED.
See, it stops being a matter of how the voter markes down his ballot when the data path can be made to lie. The "butterfly ballot" thing was something of a red herring.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Nah -- it's a little thing called "tenure."
why would vote one way, then be ashamed of it 5 minutes later
For the same reason St. Peter denied his Christianity three times before the rooster crowed (Matthew 26:34, 74-75). He apparently was afraid that others would overhear and attack him.
A pilonidal cyst is an accumulation of hair and infected sebaceous secretions that occurs under the skin in the natal cleft (i.e. - your butt crack). It stinks unpleasantly and is generally caused by having a fat sweaty arse that you sit upon all day. Often occurs in jeep drivers in hot climates.
I believe the proper way to extrapolate is to treat this as a repetition of independent events...
Basically you would end up with:
n=88
Single event 'Interval': +/-4000
Expected 'Interval': +/- n*4000/sqrt(n)
Thats +/-37,500
aka a 75,000 vote range...
Naturally if this is real error then this is really a lower bound, as we are treating the error to be 4,000 votes. The error was 4000 in a district of 1000, and this likely means the county was smaller than average (which means the true deviation would be much larger than +/-4k in an 'average' sized county).
Don't forget that 1 wrong vote causes a discrepancy in outcome of _2_. -1|+1....
FWIW Please understand that this is crap even by the standards of statistics, but it's at least as valid as 88*4000, unless it wasn't error...
The result speaks for itself. Most americans like what GWB stands for, bigotry, Americas Grandeur (delusional), hatred or fear of other people, the easy way out and the easy explanation. The election result could be questioned, but i think that not that many americans care more for a single Iraqi person than their big SUV's or their McDonals meal. The thesis that you could care for a stranger halfway around the globe is a myth. Evil has a nice taste and a good ring to it. Good is a bitter remedy and most people would rather be flogged than turn their back on evil. I say evil in the sense of people not caring for others, and only caring for their own wealth and prosperity. In that sense it sickens me to think that GWB considers himself a follower of Jesus, he would have turned the other cheek. Jesus says if you are not against me you are with me, not the other way around. It is also said that you should not take the lords name in vain.
Yep, you heard me right. I propose we blow Florida off the coast and give them to Cuba. They keep screwing things up. ;)
P.S. For those of you who take me seriously...you should be shot. Good day.
"Even if the anomalies were not were not enough to alter the outcome of the election, they may be enough to change who has the majority of the popular vote, which would affect the moral authority of the president."
Except that the popular vote was much more lopsided than the electoral vote. It would take errors of 3.5 million or so to change the popular vote. We could change the electoral vote with a mere 43K spread over the right places (New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa) or about 140K in a single state (Ohio).
The issue with the anomalies is not the effect that they are having in this election. The issue is that the next election may be close enough that the anomalies *would* matter. Why not fix the problems now, rather than *after* they affect an election. If Dole had complained about the votes he lost in '96 and the butterfly ballot had been corrected, Gore would have won Florida and the electoral college in 2000 (assuming everything else stayed the same). Let's not make the same mistake in preparation for the 2008 elections. Let's fix the problems now.
In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but was stripped of the electoral vote due to an even larger number of very, very suspicious voter problems.
Now that was bad enough, but the so called "voter reform" which took place between these two elections were anything but transparent and affective. While I should point out voter anomilies here probably had no impact on the ultimate outcome, they should provoke no less concern. If nothing else, they should create outrage about the tax money wasted on improving the process which serves as one of our fundemental democratic rights.
Then again judging from the changing tide, we worry more about the need to return Christ to our schools and governments. Why vote when we have government officials bestowed to us by god? Lets leave operation of our prized Republic to the Almight Mighty. Instead we should close our minds and toil toward Heaven.
He used 'BUSH' in single quotes
Some C compilers recognize, as an extension, multicharacter literal constants. For instance, Classic Mac OS uses this for the various types of four-character codes such as file types, creator types, resource types, and QuickTime codec types. The expression 'PICT' evaluated to 'P'.
With dozens of glaring, huge irregularities who could possibly get arrested if some subtle irregularities voted red but were only noticed a month after the election? Among how many individuals could the blame be potentially spread so no one gets as much as a slap on the wrists for it? The government would just say "Diebold will do better next time" and leave it at that??
...but some oil companies, some giant software company who contributed red and not blue, and some defense contractors could decide to rig a few machines. If only to be well-prepared to rig more and not get caught next time.
There will be more irregularities noticed. It's that way with software. And many of those irregularities won't be fixed for the next election, either (as proven by Diebold versions over time after bugs were known).
By the way no need to fix ALL an election to rig it. Just say 3% of machines. Or get all Diebold to turn a Kerry vote into a Bush vote 3% of the time. Swap a few memory cards at the point where they're in the hand of one individual per county.
Memory cards aren't all there when you ask them for recount, either. If you are in power you can get the FBI all over it or to ignore it completely, while if you're NOT in power it's better to concede so you don't look like a whiner in front of the people that don't understand software and engineering bugs or centuries of voting fraud VS countermesures.
What we needed is decades of a pilot program in a small number of counties to get the technology and process right. Not a widespread "32767 is enough for everybody" mess!!
And to top it off, I think Bush would still have gotten elected on paper because he's so incredibly good at manipulating emotions rather than intellect. Monkey see, monkey do!
I'm most definitively in favor of some hacker adding exactly 30000 votes to every third party loon on some machines and putting a sticker on the machine notifying everyone of how easy it was.
If Windows were so secure on a Diebold, I'd like to see that Windows on the shelves. It takes only 5 minutes for my 12 year old to disable any kind of password, filters, chat logging, or game-time-limiting software I made or bought. But at least one day he MAY BE PRESIDENT! (-;
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
November 5, 2004 04:56 PM
Update: Palm Beach County has updated their numbers and added 91,802 absentee ballots and 1,041 provisional ballots. Note that the vote totals for president only increased by 1,543 votes. To view an archived copy of the previous report, click here. While Palm Beach County appears to have accounted for the discrepancy, this underscores the flaws in the system and data compilation.
Well, here's food for thought.
p osts/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1255391/
For the record, this is similar to issues Gore brought up in FL in '00. Democrats jumped all over it then. I'm betting they are just as quick to dismiss it in this case.
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Even if we all fear our inner paranoid conspiracist, it seems naif to ignore that we are talking about the biggest price in the world here. Is it really so far fetched to believe that some might even consider cheating for this? I know I don't want to believe Bush won, and my thoughts might be clouded by my emotions,but I can't ignore that this has shown to be a guy that doesn't mind bending the truth a bit for his personal goals.
I have nothing to say, just want people to read my cool new sig
...
4) incompetence replicated on a massive scale
Oh wait, IAAE, too.
Trickle down economics is the concept of stimulating the economy by lowering the top income tax rate. But you are giving an example of "military keynesianism", fueling growth through military investment.
IMHO, the only government sponsored technology that was important for the 90s stock surge was ARPAnet. AFAIK, it was developed before the 80s.
And "trickle down" works poorly as stimulus. Ask Stiglitz, DeLong. It's much more effective to stimulate demand from the bottom.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
You ought to examine why you are in this mess. Assuming that in fact your guy won deep down and that everything is wrong and that the only way Bush could be re-elected is through Republican fraud is why instead of walking away this election like he should have Kerry is going back to the Senate.
Uh, excuse me? "my guy" as you so aptly put it, the one who I expected to win, is currenly (still) in office. And unlike *you*, who doesn't seem to care about the accuracy of voting in this country, regardless of who won or lost, I think its *highly* important that the voting process be auditable and verifiable.
I'm not disgusted, offended, or anything else at any voters... you voted for who you wanted to, and who won is who won. I'm disgusted, personally, at *any* citizen of this country who thinks that a voting machine counting 4000 extra votes in a town with 650 people is in any way shape or form *acceptable*. Sure, it was found and corrected, but this kind of stuff is exaclty why voting machine code should be *audited*, *verified*, and *transparent*.
Regardless of who won, are you saying that if in 2008 the Democrats win the country by 10,000 votes, and the Republicans found that a town of 650 people had 4650 votes, that they would just "choke on it and forget it"?? I think not. I think no matter who won/lost/never-had-a-chance, whatever, that the more trust we can have in our voting system, the better. That is, unless you really *want* to be hearing about contested elections for the rest of your life. I know I don't, and I was glad that *whoever* won this time it was by enough of a margin that I doubt it will become another "florida recount" fiasco like 4 years ago.
pro-war and pro-Bush seem to have a hard time admitting that they may be wrong
People that know me know that I have no problem admitting when I am wrong. On subjects like Iraq, nobody has been able to present evidence that I am, in fact, wrong. All I have seen the anti-war people present as "evidence" has been biased, partial, or subjective.
Why is it that even though the whole planet disagrees with the US that the US HAVE TO BE RIGHT???
China is (with the probable exception on India) the most populous nation on Earth. A major staple in the diet of the Chinese people is rice. Does that mean that the rest of the world should make rice their major staple? No.
See, from my perspective, most of the nations that disagree with the United States about Iraq do so because it interferes with policies and/or business dealings of their own. As an example, both France and Russia have been outspoken opponents of America's action in Iraq. Russian materiel has been found in bunkers in the Iraqi desert. French companies, it turns out, had huge amounts of money invested in the Iraqi oil industry that they would likely lose as a result of the Allied invasion. These are just two of many things that have come to light.
I can understand how the public here doesn't understand basics in world politics.
Yeah, I can see that, too. That's why I don't limit my news sources to American media.
In fact, as soon as I get a chance, I'm getting out of this country.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Au revoir... Bon chance!
It claims to have the most freedoms ever, but when you look closely, it's not quite true. At least not anymore.
Freedom comes at a price. People tend to forget that over time. When that freedom is threatened, steps must be taken to protect it. The thing that makes protecting those freedoms so challenging today is that the political climate is such that one cannot do "racial profiling" to hunt for the people that are trying to terrorize the people. Racial profiling, in and of itself is a Bad Thing, but because we cannot just stop anyone that looks Arab and question them, these people have an easy time moving about, once they get in to the country.
See, you may have noticed that Americans don't carry "papers", as people in other countries might. racial profiling would mean that people that are just "ordinary Americans" could be stopped, harrassed by the police (or worse, another citizen). That infringes on that citizen's right to move about the country freely, as is their right. What is the solution to that?
Germany, the UK and Switzerland offer more freedom to individuals than the US.
I haven't been to any of these three nations, but I know a couple of examples that blow holes in your theory. In England, it is illegal to carry firearms. It was not long ago that someone got a gun, went to a school in the UK, and started shooting people (as I recall, teachers and children). A big stink was made about how that event just proved that people shouldn't be allowed to carry weapons. Here in the US, we have the right to carry weapons. Sure, we have problems of the occasional gun violence in schools, but considering the availability of guns here, I think that the level of incidence is pretty low. In Germany, it is illegal to even talk about the Nazis. (Germans are welcome to correct me if I'm wrong...) As I understand it, it is illegal there to even play Castle Wolfenstein, where Nazis are the enemy, being killed-off by the game player. In the United States, we can play anything we want. There is software out there where one is encouraged to beat-up on sitting presidents, blow things up, kill people, and even learn to fly airplanes into realistic cities. I don't know much of anything about Switzerland. Sorry.
So suck that pride of yours, look at facts presented from another side and try and be just a bit critical of your own o
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
"PS - an even simpler solution to tied results would of course be to get rid of the two party system and electoral voting crap and go with a parliamentary system like Canada's, but everyone knows they're a bunch of no-good commies."
HELL NO. In a parliament system the party platform acually means something. There is very little to prevent them from implementing it, lock, stock, and barrel. Which is great IF you want things to get done. IF those things are BAD however....
Of course, it might have the side effect of getting people to pay attention. But I doubt it. See, I shudder at the thought of EITHER party implementing its party platform-I just shudder at the thought of the Republicans platform more....
The one federal mandate I would like to see:
REQUIRE a "none of the above" choice for EVERY elected office. It doesn't even have to be binding. I think voter turn-out would increase by a great degree. After all, if the vote was say 42-38-20 (Bush, Kerry, NoA) with near 100% turn-out, Bush would still be President but no one would have any illusions about a "mandate" or that the candidates represent most of the people.
But, it will never happen.
Found here
.28 .26
BALLOTS CAST TOTAL . . . . . . . 665,334
PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT
MICHAEL BADNARIK/RICHARD V. CAMPAGNA . 1,828
GEORGE W. BUSH/DICK CHENEY (REP). . . 215,624 33.05
JOHN F. KERRY/JOHN EDWARDS (DEM). . . 433,262 66.41
CANDIDATE DISQUALIFIED . . . . . . 0
MICHAEL A. PEROUTKA/CHUCK BALDWIN . . 1,667
Adding up, we get
652,381 Total votes for president.
A difference of about 13,000 votes between ballots cast and COUNTED BALLOTS. So according to your measure, this means there are 13,000 want to choose one).
According to the linked page, the discrepancy of ballots to registered voters is 97,489 ballots.
So if we assume that ALL of the non-president votes were provisional ballots (thus why they are not in the COUNTED TOTALS there) there is still an overall discrepancy of ~84,000 ballots!
Can you explain this?
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
It is near an Indiana town called Michigan City...but not in the state of Michigan. Check it out. Here it is.
Didn't anyone read the article...even the submitter? Hello!
Many people are trying to attribute the "anomolies" all over the country that show that the apparent election results have bush winning as some kind of wierd polling phenomenon. If you apply Occam's razor, which says the simplest explanation is probably correct, then we should conclude, unsurprisingly, that Rove had his buddies fix the election.
A Slashdot story talks about how changing one or two votes per machine could have a noticable impact.
LET. IT. DIE.
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
Just consider any faults and problems that were not noticed... It is likely impossible ever to know whether votes for either side were affected by such unnoticed problems.
"Sources please?"
Errr! Why don't you try TV, Newspapers and Google. Books also are a great source of information and web sites of each politician can also work. I hope you don't expect me to send you a copy of each personal military record because I don't have them in my pocket right now.
This list wasn't build by me, like I said, but is widely available on many web sites. I can tell you that the information on that lists seams generally accurate to me and match what is available to anybody who listen to the news and read.
Do you doubt that Cheney did not served?
Do you doubt that John Ashcroft did not served?
Do you doubt that Jeb Bush did not served?
Do you doubt that Paul Wolfowitz did not served?
Do you doubt that Bill Frist did not served?
Do you doubt that Richard Gephardt did served?
Do you doubt that Tom Daschle did served?
Do you doubt that Al Gore did served?
Do you doubt that John Kerry did served?
Do you doubt that Max Cleland did served?
Do you doubt that Ted Kennedye did served?
Do you doubt that Jimmy Carter did served?
Do you doubt that John Glenn did served?
And do you also doubt that even if not directly politicians: Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, all war mongers did not served?
Hope your are big enough to do your homework alone and then if you find some mistakes in that list, maybe you can say something constructive and point out those mistakes in the list.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Unbiased and public oversight of the election and the voting machines is also important.
Notice how they talked about using a single PC-like system to tabulate the votes. The votes from various locations were added up by this machine. Hopefully there was no tampering or other faults...
Oh, just a little note:
The No Child Left Behind Act, for the first time in USA history - requires all schools to submit all the names, addresses and telephone numbers to the US Military upon request.
Failure to comply results in loss of funding, period.
in a parlimentary system the parties are generally forced to have a platform that the people don't hate. I really wish that we had a system like Germany's though. Parties get seats proportional to their votes, so if the greens get 2% and the libertarians get 2%, they each get 2% of the seats.
... how did Nader not receive any more votes then with these reports?
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
Look, before I went into the booth I still wasn't sure who I would vote for, but now that it's over, I'm glad it's over.
Thing is I would have to agree with the poster above , that elections have not and never will be perfect, but that doesn't mean we should not strive for it.
I have a feeling the accuracy will only get better with time and have a generally more optomistic outlook than most slashdoters on the political stuff.
I really feel that the negativity on both sides is what will destroy our democracy.
From what I've read the amount of votes we are talking about here would not have changed the election. Also I have yet to read anything on slashdot stating how many votes Kerry received due to anomolies.
The irony I guess is the slashdoters who are screaming foul at the republicans are even more guilty than Bush for the war.--Flamebait
At least it Bush had what SEEMED to be reliable information before going to war.
In the future I would enjoy a much more independent view from slashdot.
Before this election I would have considered myself to be somewhat independent in thinking and especially politics, but the far left (or whatever the right's buzzword for them these days) has really put a bad taste in my mouth and ultimately lost Kerry a vote.
Flame away and reinforce my opinion.
P.S. Too lazy to spell check
P.S.S. I wasn't to lazy to read the other sides opinion ala. moveon.org, so don't even try it.
The Trickle down theory works the very best,
but your opinion of it depends upon where you are standing...
Well, that in itself is suspicious; there should be errors, they should just be balanced. If people don't find them or aren't reporting them, then something is broken.
By the way I am reading again your post and I am not sure anymore what was the intention of your post at first?
Claiming that the list is bulshit and being sarcastic about how "lots of people would love to see that". (like it seamed to me at first)
Or honestly stating that you'd love to find more about that?
Sometimes, sarcasm its very difficult to detect on the Intarweb and if you meant the second thing I'll give you my apology to be an happy trigger on my answer. But if you meant the first, well...
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Tax Rates 2002
Last week, the Internal Revenue Service released data on distribution of the income tax burden in 2002. They put a lie to John Kerry's contention that the rich are not paying their fair share and should be taxed more.
The IRS data divide taxpayers into percentiles according to their adjusted gross incomes. Following is the share of aggregate income taxes paid by each group:
The data also reveal that despite the Bush tax cuts, the income tax is still highly progressive -- taking more from each group as their incomes rise. The following percentages measure the taxes paid by each group divided by their income. Economists call this the average or effective tax rate. etc...Dear Sir,
People like you and the grandparent are the only chance we have to override the nutjob public's choice of presidents. Please keep up the good work of writing off glaring errors, insecure software, and unexpected outcomes so that we can continue to control who gets elected to rule over the slobbering masses.
Sincerely,
The Management.
The even bigger problem is the arrogance of some people who seem to think that if someone voted for Bush he was deceived, conned, stupid, irrational, non-educated, a sheep, or a Bible-thumper when in fact many people simply do not agree with liberals and Democrats. It's this disconnect with reality and mainstream America that cost the liberals the election.
As long as you--and people like you--continue to engage in this arrogance and deny the reality that your political preferences are in the minority you will continue to lose elections.
I think the best way for liberals to not think of you conservatives as deceived conned stupid irrational non-educated sheepish bible thumpers, is for you conservatives to actually stop being decieved conned stupid irrational non-educated sheepish bible thumpers.
Or are you saying it's OK for you conservatives to be deceived conned stupid irrational non-educated sheepish bible thumpers? Should liberals be like you deceived conned stupid irrational non-educated sheepish bible thumpers to prevent further liberal arrogance?
Criticism is a perfectly valid thing. You conservatives need to recognize your faults, but, unfortunately, I suspect you don't think you have faults. There was a study published in a psychology journal a few years back that came to the obvious conclusion: Stupid people don't know they're stupid, and smart people know their faults. Do you think this applies to conservatives? If so, tell me, what are your faults? What are the faults of conservatism? What do you believe is wrong with the Republican party?
Now tell me who's the arrogant ones here...
...that there will be a 2008 election to be concerned about. We the Sheeple just voted ourselves the Fourth Reich. Fine, you got what you wanted---just remember that when the Bush Shirts come for your particular group.
Seig Heil,
Mal the Elder
The 68.8% swing county is very easy. It is Baker county. Most of the county has been registered Democrat for decades. Everyone in office there is Democrat. However, they are the staunch old style Southern Democrats. This county has, since Reagan, always gone heavily Republican in state and national contests. They voted about the same percentage in the Senate race too. To try to blame it on the Op-scans is just a case of someone not taking time to look at the voting and political history of a county. Some of the folks writing these articles need to actualy try to do some real journalisim and research the past history instead of making idiotic assumptions.
but the point that you refuse to admit is that these actions have led people to believe there is a serious conflict of interest here. Why are you so against pursuing this?
Didn't you know? The Republicans all go through a process where the part of their brain that recognizes conflicts of interest get cut out of their heads. This is how Voting Machine companies offer states to the highest bidder (I challenge ANY Republican to come up with a better explanation for offering Ohio in a fundrasing letter. Assuming you can put more words together to make a response than "it was just a fundraising letter" or "you lost, get over it"). This is how the Vice President's company gets chosen for a major no-bid contract. This is how said company got to sit in on the contract terms talks (this looks to me like they were chosen for the job before the contract existed to be awarded!) This is how DeLay hands out companies' donations to campaigners against every election fundraising law in the book. This is how Heflin pulled strings in courts in Texas to steal the guardianship of his live-in illegal immigrant maid's child. This is how nearly every reported election error is on Bush's side (with a neck-and-neck race like this, you'd think that the Republican observers would be discrediting as many Democratic votes as they could. Are they just lazy, or are they like the guy who chooses not to challenge his grade on the exam because the teacher marked more incorrect answers as correct than they marked correct answers as wrong?).
Not a single Republican bats an eye when these things happen, and they're shocked (SHOCKED I say!) when someone points out the glaring conflicts of interest. And then 30 seconds of stuttering and mumbling "witch-hunt" or "persecution" later, their minds, incapable of dealing with the concept without that crucial center of human thought, become a blank slate again having forgotten all traces of these incidents.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
A rough interpretation of the t-test result is that there is a 41 percent probability of observing a difference this extreme or greater from chance alone,
Failure to establish significance is not the same as establishing lack of significance. Basically, this analysis tells you little.
Typically, the threshold at which we begin to suspect something other than random chance is 5 percent
No, we suspect much earlier. The 5% level is just a level at which start trusting the pretty inaccurate methods of classical statistics.
Here in the south it's common to be registered Democrat to vote in the primaries, then vote for republicans in general election. Hell my entire county pretty much does that every year. I'm a Bush Democrat, since I haven't registered as independent or I'd miss voting in primaries.
It's not like exit polls == victory. The pollsters don't have anything to gain from messing with exit poll data. I just don't understand why exit polling, which is used in other countries to sucessfully predict election results to within 1% and therefore ensure votes are counted, is so freaking unreliable here. We need an external check on the system, and either our votes weren't counted right or our check isn't working. Either way, I want it fixed.
I personally knew several who weren't even as fortunate as we were. It's painful seeing a person have to sell their family's home because they can't pay the taxes on it and put food on the table at the same time.
Analyze this and this and this
It's usually very reliable in US elections... just not this time. I wonder why.
Hail the Glory of the Hypnotoad
The pessimistic cynic in me says that any group of people smart enough and motivated enough to rig an election would probably also be smart enough and motivated enough to make sure the post-election statistical analysis would be unfruitful.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Why do we need federal taxes at all? Why not just abolish all federal taxes, remove all power from federal government, and just pay state taxes? Why not let the states be responsible for themselves and their own social programs?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
we need to change the tax program itself and remove federal taxes. The states can easily make up for the money with their own tax increases. The key is to shrink the size of federal government while increasing the size and power of state government. We don't need big federal government anymore. Bush has proved this. Now it's time to reduce the size of the federal government.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
the desire not to change "horses midstream" I believe the correct expression is, "Don't change horsemen mid-Apocalypse" ;)
You do realize that the movie Starship Troopers is satire.. It actually makes fun of the Heinlein book that it is based on, quite brilliantly.
Anyways, one doesn't need to live under a powerful government - that's a very big-government republican philosophy. The proper philosophy is to live WITH a government, rather than UNDER it.
This is also where I believe criminals should be given the right to vote. Isn't their choice of not following laws a perfectly valid philosophy that should be taken into consideration when defining government? For example, if you were a felon because you wanted to free slaves, should you have your voting rights taken away because you actively worked against the principles of government? Shouldn't anti-government viewpioints be perfectly acceptable?
danheskett wrote:
1 .htm
>
> It was one CEO making a fundrasing pitch in a letter!
When a rabidly Republican CEO of one of the largest voting machine pledges he is " committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year " you don't smell election fraud?
The fact that he made the pledge in a letter asking for money is all the more suspicious.
> And, oh, the company in question makes about 1% of
> its profit from voting machines, is very transparent and publically traded
Being publically traded didn't stop Enron from commiting massive fraud. And what does how little money this company makes from voting machines have to do with its capacity for fraud?
> [Black box voting] is a very old problem for our country
But it just got about a billion times easier and virtually untraceable since the introduction of electronic voting machines, and electronic vote tabulating machines.
> I urge you to find me one article or study that
> can prove that electronic voting machines -
> flawed as they are - are anything short of the
> most accurate and secure voting system we have.
Here's Johns Hopkins Computer Science professor Avi Rubin's study where he states:
"We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software"
And read about Diebold while you're at it:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S0008
Bill Clinton said he would sign the so-called "partial-birth" abortion ban into law if it contained an exception for where the health of the mother was threatened. The GOP controlled House and Senate never presented him with such a bill.
What's your view on the pill, there are a substantial number of pro-lifer's out there who think the pill should be illegal because it prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg (obviously the pill would have to fail for some reason for this to occur).
Abortion may be wrong, but so is having that belief while cutting off funds to programs that help single moms. It's wrong to condemn abortion, and ostracize women who are single and pregnant.
It's wrong to say that abortion is murder, but allow it when the woman is a victim of rape or incest. The clear message of that policy is that a woman can have an abortion if she didn't do anything "wrong."
It's wrong to use abortion as a sole means of birth-control, but it is more wrong to punish women who are responsible(have sex, use contraception), but have an unplanned pregnancy by removing the abortion option.
The abortion debate is one of definition, some think life starts at conception, some think life starts at birth. You want to find the middle ground between those two, read Blackmun's opinion in Roe v. Wade.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Ann might be a whack job, but she is still kinda hot.
The cynic in me says that any group of people smart enough and motivated enough to rig an election would probably also be smart enough and motivated enough to WIN an election.
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
tjstork wrote:
>
> Maybe a lot of people -liked- what happened in the Bush administration.
Yeah, they're called fascists.
We should send UN and EU observers to the next elections (if they ever happen again :) in the USA. It is a common practice to send observers to elections in the third world countries with dubious democracy records who are in danger that elections would not be fair, how we could forget about USAians?
---if anyone still needs a gmail invite, message me, i have few to spare.
"it's statistically impossible"
I think you mean "it's statistically unpossible".
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Horse shit. Any proposal for more scrutiny of the voting process a la Venezuela would be shouted down as rank racism by the Democrats. Thumb prints, poll watchers and picture ID's? Why obviously it's a Republican trick to disenfranchise black people!
The fact is that big-city Democratic political machines like things just the way they are. Punch cards and lever machines allow myriad ways to game the system, and the Democrats who control elections in places like Philly and St. Louis make full use of them.
If I were a Republican politician, I'd be happy to get rid of the Diebold machines and institute Venezuelan style verification. But why bother if all it gets you is Al Sharpton shouting through a bullhorn outside your office?
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
http://americanassembler.com/feature_pics/want_job s_big.gif
There's several versions of this image floating around on the web - some of them have a source listed as the department of labor.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
I took a long, mathematical look at the numbers for Florida and have to admit that I was wrong in this the "expected" number is based on voter registrations, but the dixiecrat effect does make up for much of the difference.
I extrapolated 2004 based on 2000 numbers, adjusting for changes in voter registration and the increase in voter base, and have had to change my mind on this. As it turns out, there is only an average 3% variance from the projection in opscan counties, but an average 11% variance from projection in e-voting counties.
If anyone wants to examine these numbers and how I derived them, they can be found on this web page.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
/* devil's advocate */ What happens when someone brings extra, forged cards with them and slips them into the audit box? Is there a simple way to make sure that there is only one card / voter without attatching reversable, unique IDs to each card (and therefore each voter)? I was thinking some sort of pseduo random sequence per machine* where inserting a random number'd card would violate the sequence. Of course you wold then have to forget / not record the order in which voters used that machine*. *or per polling place, if all the machines are networked, which would add some noise to the voter order. Still if you were the first to vote that day and the first 10 votes cast were all for candidate X, it would be failry obvious who you voted for.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
The disparity is consistent amongst all Opscan machines, not just Diebold machines.
Personally, I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of any earth-shattering voter irregularities reported.
Let's assume for a moment that the election was either stolen with few fingerprints left, or tons of rampant errors that may have merely made the race a lot closer than it was. Let's assume that the mainstream media is very relieved not to have egg on its face as it did in 2000, and is determined not to go into a fuss over the vote counting like they did in Bush vs. Gore. Let's also assume that there are many small blogs all over the internet screaming bloody murder about how there was voter fraud, but that no mainstream media is willing to report it. The more they cry foul, the more they are dismissed as stubborn conspiratorial kooks.
Would it then be unreasonable to assume that most people would therefore think that the election went fairly and smoothly, with "plenty of hickups, a few thousaand votes lost or misrepresennted here and there, but on the whole, nothing to really put any legitimate dispute as to the overall effect on the outcome of the Presidential Election"?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Hagel didn't resign, Victor Baird, the Chief Counsel and Director of the Senate Ethics Committee for nearly 16 years, resigned. He resigned suddenly, just after discussing with Hagel's office Hagel's continuing non-disclosure of his relationship to and beneficial ownership of ES&S, the privately-held company that counts almost all the votes in Hagel's state of Nebraska.
Hagel was Chairman and/or CEO of ES&S until the year before his election to the Senate in 1996. Hagel's victory was described as one of the biggest upsets in the 1996 election. (Nebraska, where non-machine, and hence non-ES&S, recounts of ballots are now prohibited by law, had not elected a Republican to the Senate in 24 years.)
It is not known if Baird resigned as an act of protest or to protect himself from further investigation into how Hagel was allowed to violate FEC regulations for nearly 7 years.
Not surprisingly, the new Director of the Ethics Committee quickly announced a change that relaxed the disclosure rules.
You can read more about it here and here.
I looked at the unofficial Ohio results and was surprised to see that while there were 5,574,476 votes cast, there were only 5,481,804 votes recorded for president, including votes cast for all of the many candidates. That theoretically means that either 92,672 voters (1.7% of all the votes cast) did not vote for a presidential candidate or their vote was not counted. Personally, I find it hard to believe that 1.7% of Ohioans did not vote for a presidential candidate, especially since there were 10 to choose from on the ballot. I also noticed that most of the small counties voted for the democrat in numbers comparable to their 2000 vote but there were massive new numbers of republican votes. For example, little Mercer county cast 5212 votes for the democrat in 2000 but only 4924 votes for the democrat in 2004. Bush's total, though, went from 12,485 votes in 2000 to a much better 15,022 votes in 2004 which is a 20% improvement. Now, there is no doubt that Mercer county really loves President Bush but a 20% improvement in that lovin' stretches credibility. Generally, that seems to be the pattern in both Florida and Ohio. Bush did a LOT better in the areas he already was doing good in and that overcame his loss of votes in those areas that didn't love him so much. Bush even alluded to this when he was asked why he was campaigning in the Florida panhandle where he typically racked up 2:1 vote margins and he stated that their plan was to make it 3:1. It seems doubtful to me, though, that there was any new wave of Bush voters in 2004 who didn't vote in 2000 since the Bush voters were already turning out in big numbers in 2000 to vote for the morally-clean Mr. Bush to show their dislike of the tainted Gore-Clinton crew. Mr Diebold probably deserves the credit.
Talking out of your A-Hole isn't a valid source either. Either make a correction, a valid argument, or a coherent disagreement.
Still waiting...
= 9J =
Okay, you have a valid viewpoint. You think abortion is murder.
Abortion for rape/incest victims or those where the life of the mother is threatened, that's fine.
Assuming you're first viewpoint in valid, how does it stop being murder in the second point? Oh, it's just your opinion that makes it alright. How convenient.
Rationality isn't within the province of blind faith.
= 9J =
You want no anomalies in your elections? Yeah, that'll happen right after someone can code an operating system that has no bugs or security issues. Which is right after pigs fly, and right before monkeys fly out of my butt.
Thank God that'll never happen. I don't like monkeys.
Look, how about you go talk to some poll workers and get a clue about the weird crap that happens in a polling place, no matter how careful you are. For those who weren't paying attention, this was the largest turn-out election since WWII. Poll workers -- the ones that give out the ballots and handle them -- do this job perhaps as much as five days a year. And none of them has worked an election like this before -- none of them.
This is my third presidential election I've worked a poll -- the first time I was the one responsible for it. We had 100 (about 20%) more voters than this poll has ever seen before, and a substantial number of those voters have never voted before. I had one more worker (four instead of three) than we usually have, and I had twice the voting machines I usually have. I had the other three taking care of the folks voting a regular ballot, and I did the 92 provisional ballots in the day (for those who don't know, provisional ballots take substantially more time to process than regular ballots, including the new HAVA requirements that we give each provisional voter a method of determining the disposition of their ballot). I also took every voter who indicated that they'd never voted before, and every voter who had a question of how to vote, and walked them through the voting process (we're still using punch cards). I only had two voters stuff their ballots down inside the machine as a result (four years ago at this poll, there were four that did that), and I only had to spoil one ballot (which is unheard of).
Of those 92 provisional ballots I processed, three voters failed to follow the proper procedures, bringing me back their provisional ballots so they could sign the roster and the envelopes necessary for their ballots to be processed. Two of the three sealed their ballots in the plain white envelopes that preserve the secrecy of their ballots, but one did not. The two that did, I was able to put their ballots into the proper outer envelopes based on where they were in the ballot box when we opened it, but the third went into the mix, and there is no way of figuring out which ballot it was. The voter was an old lady who was confused about the process, so her daughter helped her vote. But her daughter didn't know about the rules for the provisional ballot, so she just dropped it in the ballot box and left.
So my poll, with two precincts, has an error of one ballot that can't be fixed. No computers involved (I dread the day we get them). Not a hanging chad issue. Just a simple, honest mistake by a careless voter who didn't stop to ask a question when she should have.
And it's possible that this ballot would have been counted anyhow -- she was issued an absentee ballot, and most likely didn't vote it, in which case it would have been opened and counted. But it doesn't matter anyhow -- that one vote error doesn't matter -- it's less than half of one percent of the votes from that poll. Nonetheless, I was very upset -- I don't want any anomolies either. I do my best to run a tight poll, and the observer who was there all day long -- an attorney familiar with election law -- had no complaint with how we did our jobs.
But I've still only spent two days in the past year working elections. The biggest year I've had we had four elections (two phony "emergency special" elections that year that were "emergencies" only so they could be one-issue elections where those who were supportive were most likely to show up and vote -- shockingly, both passed). If you know a way to stay absolutely on top of your game with a job that you'll do ten times in four years, with legal changes every year or two, and turn-out numbers that range from 15 (about what we're likely to
As a Canadian no-good commie
In my opinion the origin of all problems in USA elections is the lack of a uniformed voting system for the whole country. The fact that so many types of ballots and ways of voting exist makes almost impossible for an independent group to monitor accurately, through all the country, the validity of an election.
For presidential election the process should be run in one and only one type of voting ballot. It should be clear years in advance what it will be. Then the whole country could examine the possible problems and if a problem exist, the whole country will be concerned and the pressure will be to big to be ignored.
In Canada, federal elections are run by one federal government body, "Elections Canada". It apply the exact same process the "Canada Elections Act" in every district and we only use one voting technology through all the country. It's called "paper and pencil". One of the great things about a low tech voting system is that even after a major disaster that could make electricity inaccessible to parts of the country, our voting process will still work perfectly. The other great thing is that its almost impossible to cheat in the counting process because each single vote is manually counted in front of many witnesses, each one appointed and volunteering for is own candidate.
The Voting Material
All voting boots are identical through the whole country; each county receive identical voting packages from the federal that include the exact same material no matter where you live. If a county have a larger population, then there will simply be more voting booths in each voting point because each voting booth can only legally handle a certain maximum amount of voters. Basically a voting booth package contain:
-The list of all registered voters
-Voting ballots
-Cardboard voting booth panels
-Cardboard voting ballot box
-Standard idiot proof form to calculate the votes
-Enough receipts to give for each official witnesses of the process
-Seals and envelopes to close and lock everything almost hermetically in the voting box at the end.
Now the people that run the show the whole day.
-A deputy returning officer: chosen from among the persons recommended by the registered party whose candidate finished first in the last election in the electoral district
-A poll clerk: chosen from among the persons recommended by the registered party whose candidate finished second in that election in that electoral district.
-Each candidate representative.
Counting process
Immediately after the close of a polling station, the deputy returning officer shall count the votes in the presence of the poll clerk and any candidates or their representatives who are present or, if no candidates or representatives are present, in the presence of at least two electors.
Steps to follow in the following order, in front of every witnesses named above.
(a) count the number of electors who voted at the polling station, make an entry at the end of the list of electors that states The number of electors who voted at this election in this polling station is (stating the number), sign the list, and place the list in the envelope supplied for the purpose;
(b) count the spoiled ballots, place them in the envelope supplied for the purpose, indicate on the envelope the number of spoiled ballots, and seal it;
(c) count the unused ballots that are not detached from the books of ballots, place them with the stubs of the used ballots in the envelope supplied for the purpose, indicate on the envelope the number of unused ballots, and seal it;
(d
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Anyone but bush. Anyone know what would happen if enough proof of the e-votes giving false positives to Bush if we could toss the SOB out on his ears?
I'm with you all the way. Electronic voting, in its current form is very dangerous. No matter who is in the winning seat, it needs to be fixed.
What the current winner doesn't do about this issue will say a lot.
Blogging because I can...
that USA, leader in technology and "Leader of the Free World", can't get something like voting right! just how difficult can it be? In Finland it's pretty simple:
1. You receive a letter telling where you can vote
2. You go to the voting-site with that letter.
3. The officials check the letter and your ID. They then remove you from their list of voters and hand you the ballot. The ballot looks like this
4. You walk in to the booth, and write down the number of your candidate on the ballot.
5. You close the ballot so your vote is not visible, and the officials stamp the ballot.
6. You then drop the stamped ballot in to the ballot-box.
7. The ballots are counted manually with observers making sure everything is A-OK. The final results are available few our after the polling-sites close.
8. Results are decided by a direct popular vote. Then one getting the most votes wins. In presidental elections, if no candidate receives more than half of the vote, we will have a second round between the two candidates that got the most votes in the first round.
Related to voting: It's strictly forbidden to campaign right outside the voting-site. I was pretty shocked to see how in USA the people waiting in line to vote were handed pre-filled ballots with campaigners showing them "how they should vote".
really, this is not rocket-science!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Here is some analysis that says it is nothing:
. ht ml
http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/royle_florida
Read the above linked paper, especially the responses. I agree that it does not appear to indicate fraud. I am worried that this is an attempt to deflect critisism of electronic machines by making it look like the older optical-scan machines are more likely to have been fixed and giving the election to Bush.
The reports generally say that the ratio of Bush voters over registered republicans was much higher in regions with optical scan machines than in regions with electronic voting machines. The unstated conclusion is thus if there is right-wing fraud it must not be the electronic machines.
However they neglect a number of facts:
The optical scan machines are used in more rural areas than the electronic machines which were used in cities. It is pretty well known that voters in rural areas went for Bush. Also rurual areas have more Republicans. But the way these things are plotted, in a county is registered 3/4 republican, 3 times as many Republicans could vote for Kerry than Democrats vote for Bush and the results would look equal on these plots, even though if you suspected
fraud in those counties, it would be fraud for Kerry!
Some of the papers try to excuse this by eliminating low-population areas. But they are still considering a large rural county the same as a small but equally-populated urban county. All the plots completely ignore the ratio of Democrats to Republicans which must vary from 25% to 70%. This hides a lot of information and amplifies noise. A better plot would be to eliminate all
counties where the registration numbers are much different than 50/50, which are the counties anybody wanting to commit fraud would concentrate. However I suspect that would show random noise and discredit these papers.
This may just be people plotting random stuff and shouting when they find correlation. However there is the nagging conspiracy theory that this information is planted on purpose to try to get mindless Democrat followers to stop attacking the electronic machines and start claiming that the electronic machines are better. Pretty damn insidious!
I only voted for Bush because I am hoping to see more of his daughter's nipples :P
http://www.thefirsttwins.com/images/4m-both-2.jpg
I'm finding lots of stuff floating around about how exit polling is incredibly accurate. Like within %0.1 Can't find any legitimate data on this though. Has anybody seen anything on this? Like say, a comparison of exit polls to the actual voter count for previous elections in the US? It makes sense that it would be more accurate than pre-election polls.
If some powert really did cheat the system, how would we know? How would you go about investigating that sort of thing? There's no real way to prove that he did, and besides, no one would have the authority to conduct such an investigation. In fact, no one even would *start* one, nor have the access to information that they need because the government can keep anything "confidential." So, democracy can be just as bad, if not worse, than Communism. In fact, it's the difference between your wife cheating on you, and your wife cheating on you and flat out telling you, and forcing you to stay with her because you have nowhere else to go. Think about this, I want to hear your opinions.
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
danheskett wrote:
>
> > This is not surprising; as the Diebold CEO has pledged to give Shrub the votes.
>
> Right.
>
> The Republicans faked 90% of every poll leading up to election day that showed Bush narrowly winning
Actually, the last polls done right before the election showed Kerry narrowly winning.
Also there was much speculation that the pre-election polls overestimated the number of Republicans in their "likely voter" estimates, and didn't take in to account all the newly registered voters, who were more likely to vote for Kerry.
Indeed, the exit polls showed Kerry winning by an even wider margin.
The exit polls are the most accurate polls we have, and they're often used to verify the legitimacy of elections.
"Exit polls are almost never wrong", writes Republican Dick Harris, who had ordered exit polls be conducted in Mexico in order to make sure the election was legitimate. "To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here."
"why would vote one way, then be ashamed of it 5 minutes later"
Perhaps they were ashamed of it when they voted? When you do something you're not particularly proud of you're unwilling to divulge it to anyone whose reaction you're not sure of. This was evident spectularly in the 1992 General Election here in the UK and has become known as (amongst other things) 'shy Toryism'.
There was an article in the Daily Telegraph about this effect which speculates about a similar bias in the Presidential election just gone.
I'm not sure that I necessarily agree with the statement in the article that "That shouting [about pride in patriotism and small government] has gone quiet, under the assault of Michael Moore, mainstream European opinion and the slivers of liberal America that run down the East and West coasts." - from over here it seems like there's been plenty of 'shouting' in favour of Bush for the last few years.
Their concern is for controversy and "hits."
Ah, not at all like mainstream journalism at all then.
My other processor is big-endian.
So you're saying Bush acted on the intelligence information he received? If so, you have some explaining to do to all of the people who died due to Bush's lack of intelligence. And I can back up my allegations, not just tell you that they're true repeatedly and smirk.
SCOailism must be what McBride is suffering from, but I doubt that he will be very successful.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
What has baffled me in this election is the following.
;)
Clinton, during his term, lied about a private matter (that was really nobody's business but his own and the people directly involved) and they tried to impeach him for it.
Bush has lied in public and for the record about matters concerning national security that affects not only the American people, but has also resulted in instability in the international relations worldwide and he gets a second term...?!
These reports about tampering do help in restoring my faith in the sanity of the American people...
I mean, you hear a lot of liberal arts majors complaining that they can't find a job
Oh, I get it. My father's electrical engineerign job that he hots was just a liberal arts job, not a real job.
Of course, he was able to find a new job after 9 months of looking for a suitable replacement: answering phones for On Star. And since a job is a job to those who spout statistics like you, then he was fully receovered even though he was working for about 1/4th the salary.
I suppose he could've looked into signing up for one of Bush's retraining programs. That way, after 3 years, he could look for a 5-year job to tide him over until his retirement doing something new and exciting, like, I dunno, particle physics. After all, electrical engineering was a skilless job, so retraining makes sense.
But now I have to eat crow. Because after 9 months of unemployment, and then 9 months of answering phones, the government again needed the company he worked for to clean up more of their messes, so his former employer is now again his present employer.
"Better to watch Bush go down in flames, than to shackle such a legacy on some other more competent leader."
Ummm...
He doesn't go down in flames alone, and we (at least those of us in the USA and whatever other countries Bush decides to invade) don't get to watch from the sidelines. This is the world we have to live in - we need the damage controlled, and soon. Bush is not the only one who is going to face the consequences of his actions.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
I share a similar philosophy as that of the parent so let me try to explain the reasoning, at least from my point of view.
Abortion is tricky because you have two separate living beings, both of which have rights, and you have to weigh the two rights when determining the ethics.
While a fetus is not a fully developed human being, it is destined to become one granting it at least some rights. The woman carrying the baby has more rights, but those cannot completely eclipse those of the unborn childs.
What this means in my point of view is that the woman is entitled to the first preference. Meaning that if she did not choose to have this pregancy due to rape or incest you should have the right to choose to end it.
Consider on the other hand a women who had consensual sex. She chose to engage in an action whose designed consequence is that of pregnancy and then she attempts to escape the consequences by aborting the baby? The rights of that unborn child, while less than that of the woman, are enough to dictate that this is wrong and unethical. She played and now it's time for her to pay.
(Health related matters can always be considered in the favor of the mother again due to her standing as compared to that of the developing child).
Would I like to see a woman I know who was raped/molested have an abortion? No of course not. But I have no issue if it is legal in such circumstances for the reasons given above.
Of course given the choice between either no abortions whatsoever or abortions in any circumstance as we have now I would choose the former.
I suppose you could say that I twist the definition of "Pro-Choice" because I do believe that woman should have a choice, ONE choice when it comes to being pregnant. Where I differ from the general pro-choice belief is that I believe that once a woman has made that choice (by having consensual sex) she has no right to take that choice back to escape the consequences. (And if she never made the choice in the first place due to rape then she has the right to that choice now...)
At a Republican caucus I attended in 1986 (non-Presidential year) the voting went like this. An elder or pastor from a huge evangelical church in that area sat in the back of the room. At each vote the men looked back and raised their hand if their leader did. The women looked to their husbands and did likewise. Every vote that evening went ~18 for 3 opposed...myself being one of the 3.
Fast forward 18 years...a very small percentage of the population volunteers to run the mechanics of the election process itself. In general they are a diverse group of civic minded individuals. Can a single block game that system as well?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
(I challenge ANY Republican to come up with a better explanation for offering Ohio in a fundrasing letter
I've read that letter, I recieved a copy of that letter. It says no such thing. It asks for donations, and lets the people know that the life-long activist will do his best - to do everything he can - to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush.
Somehow you take this to be proof of a grand conspiracy. That's your whole case! The CEO of a publically traded company entered into a conspiracy to pull off the largest fraud in American history and he reveleaded his intentions in a letter sent to 2 million people. That's your claim! Do you understand how it seems absurd on multiple levels? Do you know how many people would have to be in on a such conspiracy?
Delay is a crook. I'd love to seem him in jail. I've written my letters to my congresspeople indicating that.
Finally, I am not a Republican, but this silly busness with the Ohio fundraising letter is beyond absurd. The letter is harmless. The guy in question personally donated tons of cash to the election campaign and to the RNC. He donated tons of cash to local candidates. He sent a letter of testimony, saying effectively, "I'm on board, so should you. I am doing everythng I can to deliver Ohio, so should you.". Thats the explanation, and if you read the entire letter not a single reasonable minded person could disagree.
You and your ilk make it seem like the letter read: "Dear voter, I am planning on stealing the election by rigging electronic vote machines on Ohio. But first I need your money. I will do everything I can to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush, if only you will make a large donation first. Best Regards, CEO of Diebold."
Let's be clear. You will never be able to have voting machines made by dis-interested third parties. Never. It will never happen. Companies have interests. People who work for them have interests. That is why there are procedures, certification, and rules that all involved follow.
If you have any actual proof - not innuendo or suspicion - but proof - of any actual wrong doing by a Diebold employee present it now.
Note that their server has been attacked (looks like some people don't want this message to be heard) so they are only diffusing medium quality video at the moment, but you can get a high quality one on the edonkey network:
ed2k://|file|votergate.avi|253406440|FCB6A52253FD5 0D6BB9F4E5823F755E2|
Watch great movie opening scenes!
70% of the ballots systems in ohio were the old fashioned push pin paper ballots.
I trust Chad.
I guess that knife must cut through the part of your brain that smells fish on the way to slice out the part that can sort out conflicts of interest.
So tell me, what can the company making the voting machines do to do "everything it can" to "deliver Ohio". Wink wink, nudge nudge, you know what I mean. Remember, this is the company that was caught altering code after certification, deploying uncertified equipment in previous elections, and has a long and notorious history of being insecure and knowing about it, so don't pretend they're some angelic corporation sent to protect the masses from their inability to properly poke holes in paper.
Proof? In the real world, investigating crimes works like this: someone smells something fishy and goes to a judge, the judge smells something fishy and issues a warrant. Then you get the murder weapon and fingerprints and your proof. Why don't we get someone to issue a warrant based on their use of uncertified equipment in the 2002 election and see what we get? I'm certainly in no position to read their internal memos and to compare the deployed machines to their certified machines.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I for one welcome our new Fundamentalist Fascist Neo-Con Corporate War Monger Overlords.
Remember September 10th, the day before 9/11?
Do you remember the topic that was filling more and more newspapers, and sliding its slithery way from cable to mainstream television media on September 10th, 2001?
Very few people do because the next day 9/11 occurred, and it was just like a system re-set: memories were wiped (for awhile) and prorities were reset. The subject, though, never quite disappeared, and is now back with a vengeance.
It was about the legitimacy of the then President in office, given the increasingly bald facts that the election (of 2000) looked plainly STOLEN at "high noon" in Florida.
I'm not suggesting in any way that 9/11 was engineered as a domestic distraction for an increasingly perceived as illegitimate President, though, functionally, it served that purpose like few events before it, except perhaps for Pearl harbour.
What I am saying is, don't forget the conversation that's been growing here at Slashdot and, literally, in thousands of blogs and sites around the world, since November 2nd is, again, awfully familiar, and this time, with many more eyes on the process, more exercised FOIA actvities, though with the meek, paid for and so threatened (individuals) media mute, as is now common.
So unless this conversation naturally abates or its growing discoveries are explained or fall off; or the conversation is extinguished by a gang of counter-forces, the conversation is likely to continue, and to grow in volume.
Are we going to go where, for whatever reasons, we did not go the last time (it's not like we ALL had amnesia)? Just a question. Does the beast sleep in with the wife again? Or do we do something about it this time?
The Spanish-born, philosopher-author George Santayana's 1905 comment seems particularly resonant:
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
(from The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905).
We can be retentive or anally retentive if ya know what I mean.
Kyle
Four years ago I made about 75k. Now I make about 95 - 105ish. I've bought my first house, paid off two cars, started a 401k, and actually still have money in the bank. Am I better off now than four years ago? Hell yes!
The dems would say that if I have money in the bank I'm not taxed enough. For me, this election was about taxes. John Kerry would have raised them and my bank account would have dried up. As it stands, I'm thinking about starting my own business - something that I never would have been able to do when the dems were in charge....
The question of the Clinton impeachment, was, fundamentally, did Clinton lie in a court of law. It's one thing to just lie to someone on the street, maybe even to lie to the press. But lieing to a court is an attempt to subvert justice, and is a FELONY offense. Any president that commits a felony *should* be impeached. The question came down to, did Clinton actually commit purjory. There wasn't quite enough evidence to really convict him on that, so the impeachment died.
That is not just 'lie{ing} about a private matter.'
The sad thing is, 5 years later, there's still so many ignorant people like you running around telling people that the impeachment proceedings were just because Clinton "lied about a private matter."
The artictle you are disagreeing with happens to support the points you are making and contains all of the analysis of the article you refer to. You obviously either did not read the article or could not understand it.
At 12:00 noon it was down, and was for most of the day...just a little joke about the coincidence...
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Optical scan is used in rural counties that are mostly Republican, while the electronic machines are used in the mostly-Democrt cities
wrong, read the article.
1) Rural FL cities are overwhelminly registered democrat.
2) optical scan is used in more large cities than E-voting
They never plot this information, instead trying to hide it behind population counts,
Did you read the article you lambast? there are 6 plots and not a single table and not one population count is cited.
This could very well be a deliberate attempt to manufacture data to try to make people suspect the optical scan machines are bad and electronic ones are good
the web site you blame states in the first section in bold italics that the data does not support any such conclusions.
Try readin' before you post.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You arrive at the polling station.
Your name is checked against registered voters.
Your name is checked off so that you cannot vote twice.
You get a ballot paper with the names of candidates on it.
You go into a booth and mark with a pencil a large X in the box next to the name of the candidate for whom you wish to vote.
You place the ballot paper into a sealed ballot box.
At the close of voting, all ballot boxes are taken to the counting room, which is usually televised thesedays, and a few dozen people sort the ballot papers into piles according to who the votes are for.
Some more people count these piles, while other people walk up and down the aisles making sure all is in order.
The count is announced and a winner proclaimed.
You have it all in physical terms - the ballot papers, the boxes, and you can confirm that there's nothing missing or that there's nothing "extra".
If you were to take a pile of bills into the bank, and they credited your account with "approximately" the amount you thought you had, you'd be pretty upset. Businesses would demand banks be shut down until every penny banked could be accounted for.
So why so lax over something just as important? The signals this gives out is "Democracy good, Capitalism better".
It's not a perfect world, but for something that happens only every four years, why not get it as perfect as you can? And for once, technology isn't the answer. (cue the mod-down remarks for that one)
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
You: WTF? There's no connection but I'm right anyway?
Yes. Did you read my post? 9/11 wasn't the justification to attack Iraq since there was no link between Iraq and 9/11. But 9/11 is what lit a fire under our *ss and got us looking seriously at potential threats. Thanks to Iraq's behavior over the last decade they were at the top of the list.
You're right that nobody ever made an explicit connection, but they sure implied it as often as possible.
I've never seen any implied connection closer than that Iraq may have had contact with Al Qaeda (they may have) and Al Qaeda had something to do with 9/11 (they did). I see no problem with either of those statements. If people jumped to conclusions about what those two statements meant, that's their fault, not the administration's. Heck, even the quote Moore used in his movie where Rice is saying "Of course there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11" actually goes on to say "It's not that Iraq was involved in 9/11, but the same mindset that lead to 9/11 exists in Iraq" or something like that (I'm not going to look up the exact quote right now, but that's the basic idea). So I'm suspecting that even a lot of the "quotes" that people heard going into Iraq that caused them to believe that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 may be due to selective quoting.
After all, Condi Rice dropped the ball on the Bin laden memo.
How so?
The only conflicting signals I was hearing were between Hans Blix and the Administration.
The conflict was Iraq claiming that they had no WMDs but not cooperating with the international community for nearly half a decade and, when they were threatened with war, offering just enough cooperation to (they thought) avoid a war. Either Saddam didn't take the U.N. seriously or he didn't take the U.S. seriously.
I've also never understood the whole WMD rationale. Even if Saddam had what intel said he had, shouldn't Pyonyang be a smoking crater now too?
I agree. North Korea should be taken out and maybe should have been taken out before Iraq. That doesn't mean Iraq was a bad move, though. After all, those that are actively attacking us are terrorists from the Arab world. First order of business is to take care of those that are actively attacking us. No, Saddam wasn't threatening the U.S. homeland but he was an ongoing issue taking daily shots at U.N.-authorized patrol aircraft right in the middle of terrorist-land, plotting to kill ex-presidents of the United States, with a history of invading Kuwait, fighting Iran, and lobbing Scuds on Israel in a desperate attempt to start a regional war. Even if North Korea has a few nukes and even recognizing the instability that creates, it doesn't compare to the instability and actual threat that Saddam has and did present to a very delicate region.
Jesus, not that old chestnut again. Israel's broken more resolutions than everyone else combined and they haven't had so much as a slap on the wrist.
Ah, so now we get into the boring old Israel vs. Arab/Palestine bickering.
Israel hasn't invaded its neighbors, though it has kicked butt when threatened. Israel hasn't used WMDs on its own people or on Palestinians.
But that doesn't matter anyway. Suggesting that just because some country gets away with something that that means that everyone should get away with it is bogus. Quite frankly, I would have no trouble sleeping at night knowing that Israel has a hundred nukes. I would be very worried if I had known that Saddam had 100 nukes.
See, shit like this, not being consistent, is what makes this President the world's laughingstock.
International politics isn't always consistent, one size doesn't fit all, and those that think it should will always see a politician
There are other possibilities, such as applying standards of process perfection that are easily reachable in the real world, such as requiring a verifiable paper trail.
I have nothing against that. It's not going to stop the left's claims of having elections stolen, though. I don't think the left wants a truly verifiable paper trail, in fact - might be some problems with dead people and illegal immigrants voting.
Wink wink, nudge nudge, you know what I mean.
Again with innuendo. You either are or are not suggesting a massive conspiracy. Come out and say. What exactly are you saying.
and has a long and notorious history of being insecure and knowing about it
Exactly. I wrote my election board supervisor and urged them not buy from Diebold. Luckily they Diebold to get lost. I don't trust them, not because of malice, but because of imcompetance.
I'm certainly in no position to read their internal memos and to compare the deployed machines to their certified machines.
I think we should investigate every election, but this one deserves special attention.
I just doubt that anything is amiss here.
A few points that you refuse to addres:
1. No matter who makes voting equipment, there will be conflict of interest. If the government does it, that's the ultimate conflict of interest. If private business does it, there will be conflict of interest between the individuals involved.
2. You are using innuendo to suggest something, without saying it exactly. Say it. Say what you are hinting at you. You suspect that a massive statewide conspiracy involving any number of people was formed for the purpose of defrauding the electorate of Ohio. There must have been pre-meditation. At least 150,000 votes must have been changed or invalided, meaning that hundreds of polling places are affected, all in co-ordinated way in a small period of time. In addition to forming this conspiracy the CEO of Diebold informed some 2 million people of his intentions in order to better solicit donations to the Bush/RNC.
3. Proof of prior wrong doing is not proof of current wrongdoing. This is legal fact. It is however, a strong indication. There have been no claims that I can see which advance the theory that the electronic voting machines in this election were anything less than certified by Ohio's standards. If you have such claims or proof, I'd love to see it.
4. All the evidence points to the fact that the majority of voters on Nov 2 wanted to elect, and did elect, George W. Bush.
That doesnt mean though that people will be thinking "Who is this guy? Everyone i know is working!"
The sad thing is, 5 years later, there's still so many ignorant people like you running around telling people that the impeachment proceedings were just because Clinton "lied about a private matter."
It behooves you in an argument not to call people ignorant. And the Clinton issue was a non-issue that got taken to a court of law. Bush has done enough to warrant that he testify UNDER OATH, and it's not being done. Clinton's crime was being a womanizer, like so many of our great presidents. People have their flaws and prefer that my president has personal demerits instead of political demerits. He shouldn't have been taken to court. IMHO.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I'm not going to keep rewarding the Democrats for ignoring me or my views. The Greens match my philosophies and views (for the most part), so I'll stick with them.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Actually, when toting up all the speeches and position papers, there were 26 reasons used for the invasion of Iraq, 22 of which were used by administration figures at one time or another. Somebody got a nice paper out of toting them all up. Whether Saddam directly ordered 9/11 is very dubious. Operational contacts, some support, some training have been documented between Al Queda and Saddam's regime.
Saddam was a terrorism innovator. He popularized the tactic of state recompense for government reprisals regarding suicide bombing. A bomber would blow himself to hell and Israel would bulldoze the family house to encourage other fathers to keep a tighter rein on their kids. Saddam would cut a check to the family ($25k) in order to make them whole (when you toted up the support checks from various sources, it was actually profitable to have a dead end kid blow himself up). Once Saddam fell, everybody else shut the hell up and the checks weren't coming anymore.
Terrorists and their sympathizer states do swap techniques. Just for open state sponsorship of terrorist acts, Saddam needed to fall before people started sending checks to US terrorists for every gas station sniping. Somehow liberal opponents to the war never seem to get around to sorting that out.
Now that kerry has conceded, what would happen if the counting turned out wrong and he actually won the vote? does he still loose?
Of course not, he didn't win the vote. It's not a news story if Kerry got an extra 3M votes. He still lost. However, if GWB got 3M votes he didn't deservem, then the election was razor thin, and that's a story. Nobody spends time talking about how the loser might have lost by a little more than we thought.
Sort of like looking for a story on which Merck drugs work better than expected from their FDA trials. Who cares? The story is which drugs caused more harm than is allowed.
The important thing is that the votes were wrong, and, in some cases, it appears to be the result of erroneous hardware which cannot be verefied. The time to correct the problem is NOT after the problem has become fatal.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
ignorant (From dictionary.com)
adj.
Lacking education or knowledge.
Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake.
Unaware or uninformed.
People who say that the Clinton impeachment was *just* about sex/personal indescretions, are, simply, ignorant. Uninformed.
The Clinton Impeachment came about because there was evidence that indicated Clinton *might* have committed the *felony* of perjury. You might say "it never should have been in court." Where else, pray tell, would you address charges of sexual harrassment?
In the US, we believe the President is not above the law. So, when former female subordinates of Clinton made allegations of sexual harrassment, which *is* a crime, it had to be tried in a court of law. Now, granted, charges aren't the same thing as being guilty. I'm not convinced Clinton harrassed those women. But, the point is, it ended up in court, as such charges will, and Clinton came very close to lieing to the court. I believe the Senate found that, on a technicality, he didn't meet the standard for perjury, even though he didn't exactly tell the whole truth. But, that is why we had the impeachment. So that Congress could determine if the President had committed perjury.
Ultimately, the Senate acquitted him, so stop whining, and stop spreading reductio ad absurdum by reducing the Clinton impeachment to 'just personal demerits'.
Here's a torrent file for the votergate video which was taken down off their site due to an "attack". Leave it to open protocols and distributed networking to save democracy! =) http://www.logicalnetworking.net/other/VoterGate_T he_Movie.torrent
I believe WMDs and Saddam's connections to Al Qaida were the excuse for going into Iraq, not the reason. They were lousy excuses but they served their purpose. As far as what the reason really is, I would say reading up on neo conservative solutions to the middle east would be a good place to start.
Semantics.
Bush won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes, or around 2.5-3 percent. Since this was, effectively, a 2 party race, about a 1.25-1.5% swing would have changed the popular vote.
The fact is, there are more people who voted for Bush than for Kerry.
If you're talking about Bush's WIN, then you must speak in electoral votes, because people don't chose the winners, they chose the electors. Could 66,000 voters have changed the outcome? Yes. Does that mean he only won by 132,000 votes? No. You're mangling the process by leaning on the much-maligned electoral college to make your choice seem closer to winning.
Nonetheless, the "most votes in history" that Karl Rove is pushing is useless drivel. Kerry got the second most votes in history, besting Reagan, FDR, and George Washington...combined! But that doens't mean he's more popular than those guys. The percentage of popular vote is more of an indication of the sentiment. There have been several double digit winners in percentages in the past, some by 30+%. GWB won, but he didn't hit a home run.
BTW - for those of you republicans who are gloating about this win, I have a warning for you. By allowing the democratic field an open race in 2008, you've single-handedly made an opening for Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2008. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the next political convention's theme song to be "The bitch is back" either, but based on her hypothetical poll numbers earlier this year, you're going to have to come up with somebody better than Frist if you want to keep her out of the oval office next time around.
It's a shame. McCain's too old and Powell is too smart to run. You'd have a killer ticket that might just put RR's crossover votes to shame, though.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Could 66,000 voters have changed the outcome? Yes. Does that mean he only won by 132,000 votes? No. You're mangling the process by leaning on the much-maligned electoral college to make your choice seem closer to winning.
I disagree. The last time around, my choice got more popular votes, but he didn't win. The popular vote is just that - who's more popular, not who wins. This is why the electoral college needs some serious reform.
I also agree that a McCain / Powell ticket would be an appealing alternative to what we're seeing these days. However, I don't think it would be healty for America if the Republicans were to win the white house 6 out of 8 elections (80-08). This nation really needs the contribution of other voices to make a difference for our entire population.
- passion
Why don't you come over here and do it your fucking self?
Do you mind if I tell you how to run your crummy country?
And he spelt it wrong.
I don't want to be a grammar nazi. But really, if you're trying to impress us all with your vocabulary...
The disparity is 38.37% for those states that went opscan in 2004 and -12.64% for those that went evoting.
So arguably, the anomaly is greater in 2000.
Doesn't preclude fraud, but does make it less of a significant anomaly.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Bush proponant.
:P
However, where did this wonderful economy come from, which Clinton is credited for creating? "Information Superhighway." It was that whole dotcom bubble, which was doomed to burst--Bush was lucky enough to hit the offices right as the walls fell. Then 9/11 hit. For a couple minutes, I actually felt a little sorry for Dubya (don't worry, I got over it).
So it's a bit pretentious to claim Clinton created such a wonderful economic situation, when in reality it was just a house of cards.
That said...I'm still waiting for a candidate in ANY viable party I can truly stand behind. I think I have a long wait ahead of me.
-U
George just had the poor judgement to say something, in [j]est, that is taboo to say, the wealthy elite own the government and they own politicians on both sides of the aisle. Its just another case of the poor judgement that is his calling card.
I think it's deeper than that. His poor judgement was thinking he could run a country after running every other business his daddy bought him into the ground. In the case of the "haves and the have-mores" joke, I think Dubya was being perfectly frank and honest in sucking up to the elite, and his message to everyone else is quite clear - if you are not one of them, he doesn't really give a damn about you, not even enough to care what you think, and so he'll say any damn thing he pleases. If you are one of the non-filthy-rich who has been duped into thinking that this dimwitted sociopath really does care about you, then you deserve whatever you get by the time your moment of grand disillusionment finally comes.
Thanks for demonstrating your ability to utilize the vast resource that is the Internet to supplement your inductive reasoning. Did you know that usage defines a word? Did you know that calling people ignorant without qualifiers is not the same as calling people ignorant of a specific fact? Did you know that English is a complex language that derives much of its meaning from context? Did you know that you have the power to select more concise, less inflammatory wordings?
Ultimately, the Senate acquitted him, so stop whining, and stop spreading reductio ad absurdum by reducing the Clinton impeachment to 'just personal demerits'.
Right-o. All get all the ignorant people together so we can have a meeting to discuss, a) our excess whining, and b)our absurd opinions.
Could you please stop fucking insulting people, you ignorant bitch. Yes? Yes.
I don't need dictionary.com to back up my definition, thank you.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
...at least you can cheat on her without guilt. :-)
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I don't get it. Why are you using machines at all? We still do everything by paper ballot in Canada, and the results are in within an hour of the polls closing. The 'voting equipment' consists of a box of paper. It's also very hard to cheat, unless you go into a polling booth and literally take the ballot box away from the scrutineers (and the cop standing nearby.) All the ballots are numbered, the number is written down next to your name, which is then crossed out, and a stub with the same number is put into a separate envelope. All the counts have to match up. If you suspect any funny business, you can go back after the election and challenge your own vote, and they can produce the paper for you. And I've seen news reports about American polling, and you have just as many people on site as we do, which means the machines aren't saving you any money. The machines are no cheaper, no faster, no more reliable, and not necessary, which makes their very use suspicious. So what the hell are the machines for? What, Americans can't count?
It isn't just that one side or the other may have cheated. The votes were being tallied on Windows servers on the internet, and the system still had lots of bugs, holes, and exploits. Some of them are using MS Access databases. Christ, for all you know, Bush may have been elected by a 14 year old Russian kid sitting in his underwear in his bedroom, because he likes watching live reports of foreign wars.
This is too important to trust to a Beta system. It's not like we're late adopters of technology. When it's a trivial matter, we'll try out the machines. Until then, we'll stick with paper. And I suggest you do the same.
All I really care about is that people responsible for counting and certifying the vote _should_ be non-partisan.
There is no such thing as a non-partisan person!
The people who count and certify votes are elected officals. That's the closest you can get to fair. There is no law that you could pass that would require a citizen to not donate, to not be poltically active. Participating in the process is supposed to be open to everyone.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people responsible for counting votes in this country. Suggesting that you can find non-partisans to fill in this role is just beyond belief. Suggesting that we amend the Constitution so that they are unable to participate in democracy and their birthright is beyond the pale. Finally, thinking that by limiting people from expressing their opinion negates the existenance of said opinion is foolhardy and contrary to everything history and science says about our humanity.
Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has motives.
Now why don't you all stop arguing about how things _are_ and start working toward making things as they _should_ be. Or maybe you can give me a damn good reason _why_ political activists foxs have any role whatsoever in guarding the hen houses that are our ballot boxes
Because it's the only way. There is no one else that can do it. Everyone - EVERYONE has bias. Try to find 100,000 people who meet the non-partisan moniker and wish to count the 100,000,000 million votes cast isn't a possibility.
The best to prevent and limit fraud is what we've been doing for centuries: limit the responsibility of individuals. Make the process transparent and the person in charge accountable for fraud. Make the elections board accountable to the people. Give the judicial system oversight over the process.
Proposing some of type of impossible surrealistic vision of phantom non-partisans to count votes is not an answer.
Sarpy County election officials are trying to figure out how they ended up with more votes than voters in the general election.
Deputy Sarpy County Election Commissioner Ed Gilbert says, "It affected 32 of the 80 precincts. And I suppose as many as 10,000 votes."
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/10/te resa_heinz_ke.html
Your figure for gross income is incorrect - you are using the Adjusted Gross Income figure, which is much less than the value for gross income.
Teresa Heinz Kerry on Friday released a portion of her 2003 federal tax return, reporting that she paid $627k in federal income taxes on $2.3 million of AGI, primarily from dividends and interest.
She received $5.1 million of gross income, $2.8 million of it tax exempt interest income.
Ms. Heinz Kerry, who filed separately from Senator Kerry, thus paid federal income tax at the rate of 12.3% of her gross income and 27.4% of her AGI
Educate myself? Why don't you educate yourself? After all, a simple web search for the phrase doesn't take that much work considering the first result in Google gives a pretty good history of how it appeared on our coinage.
And you omitted providing even a single documented example.
I suspect that like so many other people who wish Michael Moore would just go away, you have not even bothered to see the movie.
I saw it twice. Once to debate some idiot that believed its lies and the second time to further debate the idiot that was in denial and wouldn't even believe that the doctored Pantagraph article was actually in the movie (but wouldn't herself see the movie again to prove it to herself). The movie should be nominated for "Best Comedy," though maybe not because it's certainly not the best comedy. It's quite boring.
While I think Mr. Moore has been wrong about many things in the past, he hit the nail dead on this time with Fahrenheit 9/11.
You discredited yourself with that statement making it unnecessary to even read the rest of your post. Sorry, do some real research and talk politics with the adults when you've gone past the liberal propaganda. Anyone that believes Michael Moore needs to conduct a serious reality check.
2. You are using innuendo to suggest something, without saying it exactly. Say it ... In addition to forming this conspiracy the CEO of Diebold informed some 2 million people of his intentions in order to better solicit donations to the Bush/RNC.
Say what? All I'm saying is what the CEO of Diebold said. That he'll do everything he can to deliver Ohio. I can't say any more than what the CEO of Diebold told 2 million people his intentions were. If it didn't mean anything sinister then, it doesn't mean anything now, now does it?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Everyone does have an opinion, but there are ways to diminish that opionions influence on the process.
There are current laws that prevent government employees and elected officials from leaving the government and then working with companies they've had influence over while they were part of the government.
Judges are expected to recuse themselves from cases where they have a significant interest.
Elected officials don't have to be (and shouldn't be) involved in vote counting/certifying/tabulating. We can hire parties who are known to not have expressed public political positions and who promise not to express public political opinions while engaged in the job and for a reasonable amount of time afterward. We can define that expression to include directly working for a polictical campaign. This wouldn't prevent them from having an opinion, but it would tend to reduce those who are beholden to any particular political machine.
It amazes me that people don't seem to care about the Katherin Harris situation. If a judge were in charge of the state Democratic campaign, there's no way in hell he'd be allowed to judge, say, a case involving rent due for the campaign headquarters. But no one seems to care that Harris, in charge of the state republican campaign, was able to certify a vote count where her party had a major interest. How can we look at the example of a judge and call it bias, yet look at her example and say she had no influence?
We can, and should, do much more to reduce that influance, and any other influence, whether Republican or Democrat, over our vote counting system.
TW
That overlooks the question: Why should electronic voting be used at all? It's not needed, and is much more vulnerable than traditional paper ballots.
Where do we go if we want to oppose all electronic voting?
Why Open Source voting?
Paper ballots have proved effective for hundreds of years. Why should we be using any electronic voting system at all?
And, when it comes down to it, paper ballots are the ultimate in Open Source voting. Most people don't understand programming, Open or Closed. But everybody understands how paper and pen works, so "The Source" is much more accessible than with OSS electronic voting, where most citizens won't have a clue what "The Source" means.
Personally, I would like to see Open Sauce elections - all the ketchup and booze you can handle!
I'd say there were more problems years ago when technology wasn't as advanced
Why would you say that? Any particular reason, or you just felt like saying it?
Did you ever stop to think why people are having that much of an emotional reaction? People did not have a candidate (or a manifesto) to make a case FOR until Kerry got nominated and they didn't get daily talking points telegraphed to them via biased media sources either.
A Brit in Tallahassee.
At the risk of being flamed out of existence, I simply have to ask (as one of those 'outraged "intellectuals"'), why you believe Bush is the best person to be running this country? Not why Kerry, Nader or any other candidate is bad, but why is Bush good? What has he done for you, or offered to do for you over the next four years?
Not a troll... I just haven't seen anything positive about Bush listed here (or honestly anywhere other than obvious propoganda sites).
I love a great conspiracy - this is what I could find about the counties in Florida. So, I looked at the prior six presidential elections in those counties - I independently verified the 2000 results with CBS News... Links I used to get data: Conspiracy: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm 2000 election results: http://www.cbsnews.com/campaign2000results/county/ county_flop-0.html
State of Florida: http://election.dos.state.fl.us/elections/resultsa rchive/Index.asp?ElectionDate=11/4/86&DATAMODE =
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In 2000...Bush 5,610; Gore 2,392 (Winner percentage% - between both candidates, not 3rd parties: 70%) (Nader - 53 votes)
In 1996...Dole 3,684; Clinton 2,273 (61.2%) (Perot - 667)
In 1992...Bush 3,417; Clinton 1,974 (63.4%) (Perot - 1,315)
In 1988...Bush 3,414; Dukakis 1,353 (71.6%)
In 1984...Reagan 3,484; Mondale 1,381 (71.6%)
In 1980...Carter 2,606; Reagan 2,271 (53.4%)
Fact: Baker last voted for a Democratic President in 1980 - Even Dole got 61%
In Dixie County, with 9,676 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.
In 2000...Bush 2,697; Gore 1,826 (59.6%) (Nader - 75 votes)
In 1996...Clinton 1,731; Dole 1,398 (55.3%) (Perot - 652)
In 1992...Clinton 1,855; Bush 1,401 (57%) (Perot - 1,094)
In 1988...Bush 2,027; Dukakis 1,366
In 1984...Reagan 2,204; Mondale 1,224
In 1980...Carter 2,007; Reagan 1,098
Fact: Dixie voted for Carter and Clintonx2 - but also voted for Reagan and Bush 41 & 43
Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush.
In 2000...Bush 2,454; Gore 2,046 (54.3%) (Nader - 85 votes)
In 1996...Clinton 2,095; Dole 1,563 (57.3%) (Perot - 878)
In 1992...Bush 1,660; Clinton 1,534 (52%) (Perot - 1,143)
In 1988...Bush 1,911; Dukakis 1,283
In 1984...Reagan 2,218; Mondale 1,089
In 1980...Carter 1,772; Reagan 1,500
Fact: Carter and Clinton both won once; Clinton got over 57% of the vote in 1996 - nowhere near 77.3%
Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
In 2000...Bush 5,011; Gore 2,177 (69.7%) (Nader - 94 votes)
In 1996...Dole 3,248; Clinton 2,310 (58.4%) (Perot - 1,208)
In 1992...Bush 3,196; Clinton 1,877 (63%) (Perot - 1,426)
In 1988...Bush 4,221; Dukakis 1,639
In 1984...Reagan 4,547; Mondale 1,231
In 1980...Reagan 3,208; Carter 2,767
Fact: Holmes looks like it's a Republican County since 1980 at least.
Conclusion: Need to verify against newspaper/official records at the time - which I'm not going to do. Think it's a pretty weak case and there don't seem to be enough votes to overturn what Bush won by.
Can't say there wasn't voter fraud, but can't say there was either.
My interest in stats far outweighs my actual knowledge in it.
The issue is this....
Trickle down economics assumes that if you give economic benefits to the wealthy in return for investment that more of their investment will end up as stocks and bonds. It is furthermore assumed that this will help the economy grow.
It doesn't work very well. It does generate economic growth, but this growth is unstable and recessions come and go. Why? Because wealth is created when something of value is exchanged for the fruits of someone's time. In other words, spending and buying things are what drives the economy. Investing is actually buying an idea but not buying the fruits of someone's labor.
So if you give $3M to poor people across the country to stimulate the economy, what will they do? They will buy food, buy other goods and services that they have been deffering and help make someone else richer. If you give this same money to rich people, they will invest it in making themselves richer, and there is no guarantee that these businesses will be able to reach a market, because there is no corresponding support for demand.
The market is demand-driven, and we need to support that side of the economy.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Florida has closed primaries -> You only get to vote in the primaries for the party you joined.
Florida is largely Democrat -> There are often multiple democratic candidates running for an office in the primaries AND there are sometimes no Republicans running for those offices in the same primaries.
-> Only democrats end up voting on a particular candiate. Whoever they choose will win by default in Nov.
-> A republican who wants a say in who wins needs to register as a democrat.
My parents both did this. I do this. I consider myself a libertarian. I registered as democrat last year because I wanted a say in who went up against Bush. (not that it did much good).. in 2000, I was a 'republican'. In four years, I'll may decide to change my affiliation again. (Maybe not, MD also has closed polls and is heavily democrat).
Granted, I find it rather odd that some two thirds of the democrats in a county are actually republicans in disguise. That would imply they could declare openly and probably get a candidate or two to run for office, rather than ceding the election to democrats.
Didn't it go something like:
Court: Did you have sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky?
Bubba: Define 'sexual relations.'
Court: Penile penetration of the vagina.
Bubba: No, I did not have 'sexual relations' with Ms. Lewinkski.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Man, this discussion is out of control! Awesome! It would take me approximately 6.7 hours to read the entire thread at my current rate of reading...
I'd agree with you except for one niggling detail.
Lack of a clear standard for voting technology is the path to equal protection violations. Having thousands of counties choosing their machinery in a competitive market environment virtually ensures that someone somewhere is getting a more reliable vote than someone else elsewhere. This is true whether its coexistence of manual and electronic systems or the various flavors of electronic systems. There is even an element of determinism here, as you can basically be sure that the poorer a district is, the more likely it is to have inferior equipment.
We need a clear and national standard for voting machine technology, and unless a system provably adheres to that standard in an objective review, it should not be allowed in the market.
Ultimately, I think open source code should be mandated (the idea that methods for counting votes could be considered a trade secret is insane) but I'm willing to concede that is unlikely to happen in our current legal/business culture. In the absence of open peer/public review, though, a standard set of interfaces that can be objectively tested would have to suffice.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
According to the way the vote-counting looked. The exit-polls strongly favored Kerry.
:-)
Just to clarify.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
> If election anomalies are due to USA traitors and subversives, then they are domestic enemies of US. The penalty for treason should always be loss of US citizenship, in times of peace a life sentence without parole/pardon, and in times of "war", a mandatory sentence of death should be imposed upon the traitor without pardon/reprieve. ... that intentionally participate in or by incompetence create methods, models, systems, laws, ... that are meant to allow/promote corruption, fraud, perjury, ... of voting in the "USA Citizen Democracy" should be terminated from the job, loose all associated special retirement benefits, loose their USA Citizenship, all property and money should be forfeited to public education, and sentenced to a life with no chance of parole/pardon. These folks are the domestic enemy of the USA and Democracy by idiocy and/or ignorance and should suffer the maximum penalties possible.
> If election anomalies are due to "whoops", an honest mistake was made, then total forgiveness is divine.
> Legislators, election commissions/committees, business, religion, special interest, people
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
As opposed to the government? :-)
Fair enough
They are transparent. Well Diebold is because they publically owned.
No, I meant the machines themselves. There has been more than a few posts here about the source code being closed. If this has changed or I am mistaken then I apologize. But if we cannot see how these machines work, we can hardly call them "the most accurate ever in the history of the country".
Somehow you hold this notion that the CEO of a large publically traded company formed a conspiracy to vote rig a battleground state and do so with no smoking gun and very cleverly, knowing that it'd come all down to Ohio, and in the process he accidentally forgot to keep it secret. It was all part of his diabological plan, I tell you.
No, I made it clear that I don't think there was any wrong-doing in this election. My problem with this process is that there is NO WAY of knowing whether there was wrong-doing. My comments regarding the CEO were not supporting my claim of a "diabological" (sic) plan, but they were supporting my belief that this probably wasn't the best company for the job.
They make voting machines as 1% of their business.
Please explain how this is in any way relevant to the discussion. The assertion that there is no possibility of fraud because Diebold is a large company is laughable.
There isn't a person in the country who does't have a political opinion. I never said there wasn't a conflict of interest, but this one statement made by a lifelong avowed public Republican openly about "delivering Ohio's electroal votes" to the President hardly is evidence of a grand conspiracy that would be the mostly shocking, most widespread, and most sinister that the nation has ever seen.
I am suggesting that the CEO of a company that makes voting machines should perhaps show a little more discretion. This only adds fuel to the flame.
That is what you are suggesting. That there was this big conspiracy and that he just forgot to not mention it in his letter. Right.
Did you even READ my post? Honestly?
Do what ever you want. But the voting machines used this election are the most accurate ever in the history of the country.
That's a fanboy statement if I have ever read one. You have absolutely NO evidence to support that claim. I have no evidence to refute it, and this is exactly the point I have been trying to make to you. But whereas neither of us have evidence, there is enough suspicion of inaccuracy to warrant further investigation. You have nothing but fanboy arguments and a misguided or malicious belief that since Diebold is a huge company they wouldn't bother to screw around with voting machines.
Really man. Get a grip.
Very good advice.
... sounds quite similar to Finnish conditions.
Here, we have to register our address - which is also linked to our free medical insurance*.
Therefore, come election time, the authorities know where to send the voting card. If your voting card gets lost in the mail, you can still vote.
This is how it works:
On election day, I realize my room is a mess, and give up finding my voting card.
I then take some picture ID (Passport) and my medicare card to the local voting place.
I then wait in line with the other fools that have lost their cards.
When I get to the front of the line, they verify that I'm me and look me up in a big register they have of local voters. All voters in the district have been distributed among tables in the voting hall, and they tell me which table to go to (from looking at the register) and give me a new voting card.
I take the voting card to the table, and they verify that I'm me (again), and then gives me a (paper) ballot. Cut to me entering a voting booth.
Very simple to do, very long and tedious to describe.
*(we get to choose a local doctor, whose name and number is then printed onto our medicarecard, so that if the hospitals need quick information about their new patient, they know who to call)