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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.
...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
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."
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.
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.
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?
Your side wins.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's the election not some radio receiving test, there should be no anomalies.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
When you're dealing with a religous son of a bitch, get it in writing. His word ain't worth shit, not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.
-W. S. Burroughs.
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.
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.
One thing to bear in mind is that more than just the presidential election was on the ballot. Lots of state and local elections may have been affected by these anamolies and may have had their outcomes changed.
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
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?
...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.
Bush won. Again. Get over it.
I believe this. The electronic voting issues have been issues since well before this election however, and I'm not about to stop inquiring into the many documented problems just because I accept that Bush won this one any way you slice it.
As for why it takes a while for this stuff to start coming out, a lot of the detailed numbers and vote counts aren't released until at least a week or two after the election occurs. So it's not possible to find these serious errors on day 1.
I think a lot of this stuff is being overstated, like the Florida "inconsistencies", which don't seem so unreasonable to me when you correct for geography, cultural makeup, campaign time and other issues. And as you point out, the idea of 3 separate, _competing_ companies collaborating together to defraud the Florida electorate is pretty much completely laughable.
However, the 4000 Bush votes that mysteriously appeared in an Ohio precinct with less than 1000 registred voters is a proven and acknowledged issue - that's why this story was carried by CNN, not just some crazy blogger. And other legitimate issues will crop up, I'm certain of it. Whether anything will indicate provable, large-scale fraud, I am very doubtful, but more evidence is surely forthcoming that indicates the inherent weaknesses of many of the black box electronic voting systems that have been put in place over the last few years.
actually, 300,000 votes in a single state could have swayed the election.
You always talking the same shit Dave. The last article on blackboxvoting I saw you posted 10 comments all spouting the same crap. You seem to be very fired up about this topic, perhaps because you either voted for Bush or perhaps you are a closet Republican.
The big point you don't seem to get is that without an audit trail these machines are totally unaccountable. NO MATTER HOW MUCH MONEY YOU HAVE, so yes, even the "300M Kerry campaign" wouldn't be able to find out what really happened. This is the whole fucking point. So, please, pull your head out of your ass. You can't say with *ANY* certainty that Bush actually won.
Actually, I don't think anyone (at least in the story) is crying foul that it was done on purpose. The point is the machines are showing signs that they screwed up.
Regardless of who won, and regardless if it was intentional or not, it is essential to investigate the problems, if only to prevent them from happening again. If it is determined that the errors are significant and widespread, then the elections must be redone. Those are the breaks.
We can discuss possible fraud once we know what the problem is.
Oh, and unless Diebold manufactured scantron-style counters and are responsible for printing provisional ballots with no addresses, I think your little rant is just slightly misplaced.
=Smidge=
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
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?
/. about them?
So, if they were undetected, how could we have a story on
And 2/3rds of the stories linked were about a nonpartisan type of failure, which wouldn't necessarily give advantage to either candidate.
With this many fallicies in the first sentence of your post, why should I read the rest?
Besides, suggesting that the election machine companies are acting together is not farfetched. Their ownership is rather tight with each other.
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.
Wow, I wish I could assign all five of my mod points to your post here. Thanks for compiling a level-headed and wise posting for people to read. You're entirely right that the process is too complicated for a conspiracy theory of some sort to hand one candidate or the other the vote. As you also rightly point out, the simple fact that voting discrepancies are being discovered is proof that the auditing trail works.
I doubt this will put some people's minds at rest, finally, and conspiracy theories will continue to be traded about. What would be better would be for the people who backed Kerry (such as myself) to take a long and discerning look at why Bush was able to win the election, rather than lobbing venomous allegations across the political aisle. I think that the results of the election provide more than enough material for the Democrats and non-Republicans to scrutinize during the next four years. Doing so will certainly be far more advantageous in the long run than worrying ad nauseum about shadow conspiracies.
I will grant, however, that the idea of shadow conspiracies swaying the vote is a much more dramatic and interesting explanation than to say that normal political and social causes were responsible.
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
So just because it happens every year means we should just sit down and go ho-hum?
I really don't think anyone here would claim that Kerry lost the election because of these anomalies. Any ones that would think that probably wear tin foil hats. Anyone that thinks Kerry lost the election because of these and thinks posting about it on the internet will change anything is just plain ignorant.
However, we should be paying attention to this. These are not your common irregularities. This is a whole new system of casting your vote. I've seen statistics that 30% of the votes this election were cast electronically. When we have such a large percentage of participation with these things, don't you think it's time we looked at the problems of them? And when stories like these come out about malfunctions and obvious conflicts of interest, don't you think that we, citizens, should make sure they're fixed before the next election?
Personally, I've written several members of my state congress asking about possible bills for requirements of electronic voting machines, such as the all-so-important paper trail. What have you done?
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Great idea, but you figure out how to make it happen. Elections are a big business, you'll be rich.
.020% spoilage rate would very agreeable.
There are 300 million people in this country across a vast area.
Registering them, validating their right to vote, and recording and tallying those votes is a big effort. Out of about 110 million votes cast, if there are a total of 250,000 that are in question that is a very good outcome. A
Maybe Kerry (and any other person who might care) isn't making a big fuss because there isn't enough evidence to make a case yet. Seriously, I doubt anybody who had the ability to rig a national election would do it in a sloppy manner that was easy to detect (Dunno what happened in Ohio, that could be pure user error, although it's odd that the errors seem to favor Republicans in nearly every case). I suspect that if the vote was rigged that we will never get more than some statistical oddities out of it. Even when the same irregularities show up year after year, there isn't enough evidence to make a case out of it. Besides, it would take an act of Congress to get a real investigation going, and somehow I don't see that happening (not as long as these strange coincidences keep getting them elected).
College professors and other academics can point out the irregularities in the system all they want, they don't have the power to actually change anything (what are they going to do? Vote those jokers out? Ha!)
At this point I havn't seen anything like a smoking gun (don't expect to either), but I also have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that appeared right when it became obvious that yet again the exit polls (the primary measure of voting fraud in foreign countries) were skewed yet again this year (even with different people in charge!). Either 5% of the population have started systematically lying to exit pollsters (refusal rates havn't changed significantly), or there is something else odd happening.
I read the internet for the articles.
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.
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
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.
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
I don't understand this attitude at all. Why would you lie to exit pollsters? Do you lie to your doctor when you go in for a checkup? Do you lie to the waiter about what you want to order in a restraunt?
Having accurate exit polls is to the advantage of everyone--everyone, that is, except people trying to rig an election. They are the only ones who benefit from trashing the exit polls. Are you trying to help them?
For that matter, why is it that we are expected to believe not only that lying is rampant, but that it is much, much more common for the sort of people who place high importance on "moral values" to lie? Remember, it's not as if a bunch of Kerry supporters are supposed to have lied and said they supported Bush, is it? It the conserviative, upright rural Bush supporters who think moral values are very important that are supposed to have lied en mass. Does that make sense?
-- MarkusQ
Show of hands. Who knows what an op-scan ballot is?
We use these in Loudoun County, Virginia and I can't imagine a reason for not doing it this way. There's nothing mechanical like all these goofy punch card systems... state-of-the-art 1890's technology, with their byzantine layouts. The ballots are incredibly simple and clear, so there's confusion down in the old folks' home where someone mixed up the medications.
And unless you have some kind of seizure while wielding the pen, there's no chance of ambiguity. But it doesn't reap millions of dollars to a company for forcing expensive, buggy, hopelessly complex solutions, where simple tried and true technology serves effectively, so I guess it's just not a feasible solution.
In addition to being prone to ridiculous errors, there is also the possibility of fraud, although I don't believe most of these can be attributed to some widespread conspiracy to cheat. As I've always said "Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence." and to that I would add, "The government will never choose a simple, cheap and effective solution when it is in competition with a complex, expensive and flawed solution."
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
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.
What, what, what?
What policies?
Trickle down economics NEVER WORKED. Ask an economist. Look at any measure of a civil society. All down hill under Regan, Bush, & Bush. Violent crime, illiteracy, property crime, major corporate scandal, & war.
Military industrial spending, only works for institutional shareholders and members of the board.
Faith based initiatives are antidisestablishmentraistic bullshit.
The Republicans are not the GOP. The Republicans have been becoming the dixiecrats since 1964 and now the transformation is complete.
The GOP right now is a radical anti-government party trying to undo the new deal and reconstruction by stealing tax dollars from the liberal coastal states to subsidize rural Christian lifestyle. Look on a map of what states get more in taxes then they paid, almost all "RED." So they vote for a tax cut and increased spending knowing it means more northern liberals are shelling out for them. The farm bill being a great example.
Why should we "get over" someone stealing an election? Without democracy we become just a bunch of assholes pissing on the rest of the world.
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!"
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
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.
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.
4000 votes for Bush from a tiny county in Ohio that decided the election and where the margin is just over 100,000 is obviously significant.
The optical scanner anomalies in Florida are potentially hugely significant.
The anomalies in New Mexico could easily flip the state in to the Kerry column so they are statistically significant though they can't change the outcome of the election without Ohio or Florida.
The key point is if there is election rigging or incompetence its ALWAYS significant. If you don't report it, investigate it and punish it your opening the floodgates to everyone to do it in every election and your elections turn in to dodo.
@de_machina
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.
"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
"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
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??
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.
people don't line up in the rain for nine hours to tell the president what a good job he is doing.
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.
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.
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?
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
Bullshit -- Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy reduced the amount of federal money going to things like schools, etc. This in turn raises the local tax burden.
""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
I dispute the "minor job loss" claim.
In 2000, there were 110M jobs and 281M people, so a rough estimate is that you need (on average) one job to support 2.6 people. We've probably gained about 10,000,000 people since Bush started in 2000, which means that about 3.8M jobs needed to be created during his administration, just to keep pace with population growth. Even if there are the same number of jobs as when he took office, he's nearly four million jobs in the hole.
Nor is it just a matter of liberal arts majors not being able to find work. The total job numbers hide the number of underemployed, who are working fewer hours than they would like or working in jobs that don't utilize their skills and training.
During the eight years of the Clinton administration, total jobs increased by about 22M, more than two jobs for every three people added to the population. Historically, the fastest job growth has always occurred when Democrats were in the White House.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
That said, I don't care if Bush comes out another 3 million ahead at the end of this, if these claims are true, then something has gone drastically wrong. We should all be shocked an appalled by this regardless of our political affiliations or desires.
If 88,000 more people voted in Palm Beach than are allowed to vote, then regardless of who they voted for, we have a problem. If this happened, then either the companies making these machines are corrupt, or else they are incompetent, as are the election officials who approved the machines(everyone makes buggy first run technology, but using buggy first run technology for something as important as an election is, in my opinion, grounds for termination).
We all need to do something about this because if it's true then Republican or Democrat our votes don't matter, we are the whim of either a corrupt organization or total chance. This is something which, regardless of all other ends, is unacceptable in a place which claims to value freedom.
Because a zygote or a fetus isn't a baby! Many anti-abortionists are also opposed to most forms of birth control as well as regulating (mostly female) sexuality so the issue definitely involves control over a women's body.
I don't agree with you, but I'd really love to hear you explain why you believe it's OK to for rape/incest victims to commit murder. If someone breaks my nose, does that mean it's OK for me to murder my 6 year old kid?
As far as I can see your position is indefensable under your own logic. If it's murder then you have no right to murder innocent person X just because guilty person Y commited a crime against you.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I don't believe the war on drugs is at all like making abortions illegal. A person doing drugs will rarely impact anyone else directly-- with abortion there will always be a loss of life if it is carried out.
I understand this, but my point is that making something illegal doesn't stop it. It usually just makes it worse. Ever seen the "No Coat Hangers" sign? That stands for "No Back-Alley Abortions." It's the same thing (no, not exactly, but along those lines) as drugs. If you make it illegal, you've just opened up a market for it.
My suggestion is to stop people from getting pregnant in the first place. Talk about it in schools. I went to a Lutheran grade school for 10 years. Guess what. We talked about contraceptives. It was so long ago that I don't remember if they recommended abstinance, but I do remember talking about STDs and contraceptives. We also talked about it in my high school. Just giving people the facts could greatly reduce the risk. Yes, scaring works too. Kind of.
But what I'm also saying, about the counsiling, is that by forcing them to talk to people who have done it, they can know what it's like, and it might just scare them straight into having the kid. I'm not a psychologist, but I think they would be of great help. And Republicans and Democrats do look at it wrong. It's not black and white. You'd think we could come to a comprimise here, but people are stubborn.
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.