Programmer Claims he was Paid to Rig Votes

Duke Machesne writes "In the year 2000, Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney hired programmer Clint Curtis, while he was working for NASA contractor Yang Enterprises, to write an undetectable vote flipping program which could 'control' the votes of electronic voting machines, according to Wayne Madsen's latest article for the Online Journal."

Comments

yes yes I'm sure..

[Beatbyte]

and Jesus built my hot rod.

how about some proof? good thing he's getting his 15 minutes of fame though.

Re:yes yes I'm sure..

[seann]

Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry lee lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world
So there was only one thing that I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long

Re:yes yes I'm sure..

[StalinJoe]

Video link for those who don't hate yahoo videos' commercials...
Jesus Built My Hotrod

Re:yes yes I'm sure..

[Doc Ruby]

Fame as a criminal, traitor, Republican party-betrayer? We'll get the proof - his testimony is an affadavit in a lawsuit. Meanwhile, why do you decide he's lying? Unless you really *do* believe that Jesus built your hotrod. If so, we've got some job openings in Iraq for the 50M Americans like you.

Re:yes yes I'm sure..

[Beatbyte]

it is funny that anything that is portrayed as going along with your political beliefs is automatically true and anything against is not.

all i ask for is proof. until then, there's nothing to talk about.

Ok

[Apreche]

Like many others I would like to believe this. And if its true I would like to utilize this information in court to try to make something happen.

But is there really enough evidence to hold this up? I don't see this article citing any sources. And towards the end it starts to sound more like a crazy conspiracy theory than something real.

Re:Ok

[Just Some Guy]

Like many others I would like to believe this.

You, sir, are freakin' insane. You'd like to see the bloodbath that would probably ensue if it turned out to be true? You hate the results of the election so much that you'd like to find out that your republic had been destroyed?

I desperately want not to believe this. As long as most of us have reasonable faith in our electoral process, we can get through pretty much anything. The alternative is probably not far short of civil war.

Re:Ok

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

But you'd prefer to allow government officials to keep their positions even if they actually cheated in the elections?

Perhaps the alternative is indeed a civil war. In the long term, how is that worse than a government and nation cheated by the elite few?

Re:Ok

[jeif1k]

As long as most of us have reasonable faith in our electoral process, we can get through pretty much anything.

You mean like a plummeting dollar, a failing economy, a losing war, an unprecedented transfer of money to the wealthiest few, thousands of war deaths, and a dismantling of civil rights and our constitution?

Who we elect matters. And if people get into government by corrupt means, they are probably up to no good and can cause serious harm to everybody. The US was founded by people who did not want to have hereditary rulers. Do you want to bring that back? Is Jenna's husband automatically going to be the next president?

Re:Ok

[ralian]

Well said.

Re:Ok

[Creepy Crawler]

---You, sir, are freakin' insane. You'd like to see the bloodbath that would probably ensue if it turned out to be true? You hate the results of the election so much that you'd like to find out that your republic had been destroyed?

The republic stands if the people stands, not if the government can "live". If it means a bloody removal of the offenders, God bless them.

---I desperately want not to believe this. As long as most of us have reasonable faith in our electoral process, we can get through pretty much anything. The alternative is probably not far short of civil war.

I have faith that the same families will get in to political positions, leech our money for pork and other inane things, and then get us to go with the next big crisis like the "War On *".

And when our civil rights degrade enough, people will care. We will fight, and many of us will die. Then again, our country's faith will be renewed, albeit with much less of a population.

Long live Titor

Re:Ok

[reverius]

civil war is better than ignorant peace. if your solution to the problems with the electoral process is to ignore them, stick your head in the sand, and have faith (despite evidence to the contrary), you've already lost what you were trying to protect. you might have peace, but you have to admit, you have theoretically zero control over the electoral process.

i'd prefer civil war to faith in a broken electoral process. faith doesn't fix it. it just means we'll have false happiness while things get bad... really bad.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Conspiracy theories breed when government isn't transparent. So even if it isn't true the question you should ask yourself is "why can't I easily disprove this?"

Why? Because your government "of the people and for the people" is secretive. And that you americans foolishly let binary only voting machines into your system. And you are led on a merry chase into iraq by your government on no evidence. All these events that have been happening in the US, even if they stem from ignorance rather than malice, are damning of your status as a democracy.

I no longer consider America to be a real democracy; rampant gerrymandering, inability to do simple vote counts that every other western country does fine by hand, stacked courts, corporations writing law (from energy to RIAA), extreme abuse of "patriotism" as a political attack (which brings dishonour to the user), attacks on war vets (McCain was attacked by repubs too), corporatised media which is just a joke by everyones standards asides from the italians or maybe the chinese, rampant invasions of privacy, high court sorting out your fucked up voting system, unrepresentative voting system designed for duopoly, intellectual property in general is a joke, corporate scandals, corporations getting away with anything (MS monopoly, union carbide etc.), attacks on multilateralism, the UN and landmine treaties, kyoto and the very concept that there is a risk to the environment from our actions whilst being the biggest polluter, the biggest arms dealer in the world, not to mention the fatest nation on earth, economy tumbling down into ruins, largest military spender in the world, most nukes, most wars conducted in the last few decades, political assasinations in sth america and a big dose of ego (as fat as the waist lines) which claims all the above is flawless.

Irresponsible, greedy, fat, polluting, corporatist bastards who think they are god's "democratic freedomfighting" gift to the world.

You are nothing, nothing besides a fucking cautionary tale.

Re:Ok

[Darth_Burrito]

Political reasons aside, we are at the stage of the adoption of computer based voting technology where the discovery of fraud could be a good thing.

There are some classes of applications, more broadly of systems, where a very high value is placed on security. I think our current voting systems do not place nearly enough emphasis on the integrity of the system. Therefore, discovery of wide scale fraud would be a good thing because it will force people to place a stronger emphasis on security.

The worst thing that can happen would be for precincts all over the US to dish out big bucks for 1.0 level voting technology and then have to use it for the next 15 years to justify the costs. Better to expose the problems now than to commit to an unproven voting infrastructure.

If we don't identify voter fraud, then people will assume it doesn't exist. Ironically, most of the found cases of errors so far have been caught within the overall voting system. This particular allegation is interesting because it alleges an uncaught error. This is the kind of thing that really demonstrates system failure, and it's the kind of thing we need to come out now if we are going to have a trustworthy electronic voting infrastructure in the future.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not a nation of filthy pig dogs. We are a nation of idiots. Big difference.

Re:Ok

[MasterOfMagic]

If you're so proud of your view, why don't you post under your real ID instead of Anonymous Coward.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't I not only post with my account... but meet with you on the "No Spin Zone" or some other FOX debate show that's "unbias" to debate the issues with you and the host? pffft.

Classic american, trying to make it about the person rather than the issues.

Re:Ok

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You mean like a plummeting dollar, a failing economy, a losing war, an unprecedented transfer of money to the wealthiest few, thousands of war deaths, and a dismantling of civil rights and our constitution?

Wow. That would suck. Good thing none of that is happening in my country. If it ever does, I'll be pissed.

Re:Ok

[MasterOfMagic]

How does the "No Spin Zone" have anything to do with this? I'm just saying that if you're proud that you hate America, why not post with your registered UID? Is it really that hard?

Re:Ok

[Enrico Pulatzo]

If the choice was between going to war or letting some cheating officials have office, let the damn cheaters have office. There's precedent here that isn't worth challenging.

How many casualties does it take to settle a non-combatant struggle? Judging from the last civil war (not that those numbers would be too good of a metric for this sort of thing) about 110,000 lives (just from combat, not counting disease).

Are casualties really worth a conflict? I suppose a more apropos question would be would this theoretical conflict save our overseas troops lives? I dunno.

Re:Ok

[St. Arbirix]

The US was founded by people who did not want to have hereditary rulers.

Correction: The US was founded by upper class white guys who turned the people against the current government in order to give themselves more power. Ever since then it's just been a trick of playing all the lower classes off of each other (servants against slaves by making laws not allowing the two groups to interact, poor farmers against indians by sticking the farmers on land the government promised to the indians, and for the last 100 years it's been lower class against middle class) in order to keep the heat off of themselves. There's really no place in the world where this doesn't happen.

So long as our powerful elite can keep everyone reasonably sedate it's all ok. Ours apparently isn't doing its job.

Re:Ok

[roseblood]

YOU: i'd prefer civil war

ME:
MOVE ON.

You lost this election.

GET OUT YOUR BASE AND WIN THE NEXT ONE.

If you want to have a war over who won an election or not go to some eastern european ex-soviet block nation. That's what they're about. Not US (the USA as a whole, even if individuals like you like the idea of bloodshed to change the head of the executive branch.)

This fucking nation was put together to AVOID the kind of conflict you want. Those in power are given terms of limited duration. The number of terms they may serve is limited by both the law and by the electorate.

The electorate chose not to limit the current president to a single term. The law makes the upcoming term his last.

Now... how the hell does one "flip votes" on voting machines that are free of remote conectivity?

If I wanted a system where I could change the value of some piece of election data I'd want to poll that data to verify that I wasn't "flipping" the vote from my desired result to an undesired one.

Anyhow...if a state certified a voting machine that didn't leave a paper audit trail that'd validated by a voter they damned well deserve whatever they get.

Bring on the negative moderation. It's only Karma!

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen here, you sack of shit, I am not revealing my identity for fear of your McCarthyist bullshit.

Your warrentless searches.

Your indefinite detention of foreign nationals in violation of international law.

etc. etc.

Your whole culture at the moment is "you must only want to be anonymous if you have something to hide"- I call bullshit. My "identity" has nothing to do with my points. So I think your inability to rebutt my points is more telling than my valid concerns about not revealing my identity.

Just wake up and smell the tear gas, you aren't living in a democracy america.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point of this article is that regardless of how expansive a get out the vote effort there is, when the machines that count the votes are rigged it'll always fall in favor of the bad guys.

The precise nature of their control is to effectively remove the imposition of term limits, giving unlimited de facto control over all aspects of government. Many of the elected officials are simply figureheads for the people that do the moving and shaking anyways, changing an 'elected official' to maintain the appearance of an operational system doesn't change the fact that the underlying entities that propell those officials remain.

Before you consider the law on term limits to be so sacrosanct, let me point out that there's currently a law saying that no foreign-born person can be president, but there's a lot of things in motion this very moment to have that removed. Do you think that if a sufficiently large margin of representatives (obtained through whatever dubious pseudo-electoral means) wants to overturn term limits, they wouldn't do so?

Quite frankly, I think things would have to be much much worse before anyone had the balls to do anything, period. People are lazy. They have no genuine concern for neighbors, only a modicum of concern for family. There is no revolutionary spirit any more except from psychotic survivalist hillbillies living on K-rations in the hills of Montana, any stirrings of true reformist sentiment beat out of people with the relentless drumbeat of jingoism from pisspoor cable news.

... and one 'flips votes' by either writing software that goes into the machine at run time, or 'adjusts' the tally at collection time. If you think these machines operate in a disconnected vacuum, you're being quite ignorant (whether that's willful or otherwise is still left to debate.)

Yes, people should have demanded voting machines that'd allow them to audit the vote. People should be much more aware of how the government works in general, but when you're working for your $8/hr at walmart and spending all your free time thinking about how to survive in a dismal economic environment, paying attention to what senator so-and-so is doing with such-and-such money is low on the list of priorities. News media is SUPPOSED to be in that business of keeping track of the powerful, but most outlets have long since given up the idea of inciteful analysis, and many on the concept of truly objective reporting. They'd rather opt for 'balanced' reporting which pits one side's spin versus another side's spin, resulting in far more heat being generated than light... an entertaining and content-free pablum served up as the 10 O'clock ratings grabber with headlines only just slightly more respectable than "Bat-Boy Snatches Baby from Roller Coaster", with a commesurate amount of actual, factual data.

Yes indeed, some people are getting exactly what they deserve for inviting this in either actively with votes and complicity, or passively by sitting in the darkness instead of lighting a candle... while the rest of the world shakes its head and waits to see the form the collapse will take, helpless to prevent or seriously alter the path of a country so determined to self-destruct from a combination of greed, laziness, ignorance and myopia.

Re:Ok

[Curtman]

You mean like a plummeting dollar, a failing economy, a losing war, an unprecedented transfer of money to the wealthiest few, thousands of war deaths, and a dismantling of civil rights and our constitution?

Don't forget alienating your allies, and imposing illegal trade sanctions on your largest trading partner.

Re:Ok

[Curtman]

Now... how the hell does one "flip votes" on voting machines that are free of remote conectivity?

Install the program locally maybe?

Re:Ok

[StalinJoe]

GET OUT YOUR BASE AND WIN THE NEXT ONE.

Oh, my fucking GOD! I always thought ALL YOUR BASE/ARE BELONG TO US was a joke, not a code phrase!

P.S. You're getting modded to oblivion because you're changing subjects so much, your posts are incoherent. Well, that, and the fallacies. And the whining.

Re:Ok

[reverius]

1) I wasn't running in this election. Nobody I wanted to win did, but they wouldn't have if Kerry won either. Does that tell you anything? Maybe...

2) I don't have a base, but if I did, it would probably BELONG TO US.

3) This "fucking nation" was put together (founded) on ideals that were considered to be more important than any person's life. These ideals include respect for individual freedoms, an end to tyrrany, and (gasp!) a voice of the people in government. I think if the nation was again subjected to tyrrany, the founders would have no qualms with whatever violent solution might arise.

4) My recommendation to start a civil war is only applicable when the people lose the ability to affect the government. Voting used to (and may still) take care of that "voice of the people in government" problem quite nicely, but IF IT DOESN'T, now or in the future, we have a problem on our hands.

Whether democrats or republicans are in the White House or Congress, if they got there in a fraudulent election, the system has failed. Anyone who wants to bury their head in the sand and pretend everything is fine is welcome to, but I won't be among them.

I'm not saying I think we should all rise up against the government because of a potential failure in the system. I'm not saying the claims of these people have any merits. But in the general sense, if the elections are found to be fraudulent, I would prefer my solution to one of ignorance and condoned tyrrany. This would be true no matter who is in office, what party they came from, and whether I (thought I) voted for them.

4) I don't think that the -people- of any given state were given the opportunity to "certify" the voting machines they ended up using. If I remember correctly, there were at least a few states (probably more like 30) that had at least some voting machines with no paper trail. Are you telling me that all the citizens of that state (and in a Presidential election, the citizens of the country) are responsible for the "certification" decision made by one person or possibly a committee in the governor's office?

Side-note: "The electorate chose not to limit the current president to a single term." ... that is assuming the elections were fair. At this point, I'm inclined to thing that they were, and there is very little (if any) cause for concern. Such cause for concern -might- arise, and if it does, I am -not- going to bury -my- head in the sand. THAT was my point (in case I didn't make it clearly).

Re:Ok

[gtkuhn]

The name John Titor is being bandied about ever more frequently. http://www.johntitor.com/

Re:Ok

[NeMon'ess]

You deny the rich are getting richer based on percentage of yearly income? Based on total accumulation? Based on percentage of the wealth in this country? You deny so much wealth has never been acquired by so few so fast?

You deny thousands of people are dead because of the war in Iraq?

Get pissed already.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

make a recommendation to start a civil war and the SS/FBI will raid you !

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

If you already believe that an election can be rigged because of the electronic voting trend, then yes, it would be a damn good thing to havea high-profile story to demolish the confidence people have in electronic voting.

Re:Ok

[goatan]

let the damn cheaters have office. There's precedent here that isn't worth challenging.

That's a very good way to start a war, when people know that there are cheaters in office they tend to want them out of office and are prepared to go to great lengths to get them out.

Witness Ukraine where a lot of people don't want a suspected cheater to take office they are threatening to become independent, something that would spark civil war. Yet you think letting the suspected cheater take office anyway would stop a civil war! Judging by the real world example your wrong.

As for saying there is precedent that's a pathetic excuse, what happened to Americas "moral" majority.

Re:Ok

[goatan]

Maybe he's not American.

Re:Ok

[Khazunga]

If the choice was between going to war or letting some cheating officials have office, let the damn cheaters have office. There's precedent here that isn't worth challenging.

Americans never cease to surprise me. You mean you prefer living in a dictatorship (albeit masqueraded) than fight for your rights? I'd fight for the rights myself.

Re:Ok

[surfsalot]

The alternative is probably not far short of civil war.

And THEY have all the guns! We're screwed!

Re:Ok

[jonadab]

> But you'd prefer to allow government officials to keep their positions
> even if they actually cheated in the elections?

That's not what the OP was saying. He was saying he desparately hopes that
said alleged cheating didn't actually happen. I tend to agree.

Re:Ok

[MasterOfMagic]

You can hold whatever viewpoint that you wish. I'm all in favor of individuals having their own perspective and point of view, even if I believe that their perspective and point of view is wrong. All I'm claiming is if that you're so happy and proud to hold that viewpoint, why are you too gutless to own up to it?

Comparing our current situation to the situation during the McCarthy era is really taking it to the extreme. I hold unpopular opinions and express those opinions often. For the record, I think that warrentless searches are wrong and indefinite detention of foreign nationals is wrong as well. Do I get searched, beaten with batons, tear gassed, or harassed by the police? No. Perhaps if you opened your eyes and dismissed the propaganda you'd have an idea of what you're talking about. We don't have a secret police force destroying lives here. At most, we have an inept police force being inept.

I value anonymity. I think that if you choose to remain anonymous that it's your own call, but you're wrong if you think that people will take your point of view seriously if you remain anonymous. You're wrong if you think that I take you seriously because you choose to stay anonymous. More importantly, you're seriously mistaken if you think the United States Government cares what you've posted Slashdot Politics.

Re:Ok

[Quarters]

Ah, the old "Ostritch" defense. Yes, please go bury your head in the sand and repeat "make the bad men go away!" over and over. That makes it all better, doesn't it?

If this is true the *last* thing we should do is convince ourselves to not believe it. If bringing the truth to light sends us to civil war, so be it. The Constitution specifically says we have the right and the duty to overthrow the government if it becomes opressive. If we don't do that, if and when it becomes absolutely necessary, we aren't patriots.

Re:Ok

[Pig Hogger]

As for saying there is precedent that's a pathetic excuse, what happened to Americas "moral" majority.

The "moral" "majority" "won".

Re:Ok

[Just Some Guy]

I picked your post to issue a blanket reply:

I don't have my head in the sand. If there are problems, then I want to see them exposed publically and remedied as best possible.

However, I'd much rather find out that this whole thing was a hoax to get a few minutes of attention. When I said that "you'd like to find out that your republic had been destroyed?", I didn't mean that I'd want that information to be hidden, but that I'd rather find out that it was incorrect.

Re:Ok

[jeif1k]

You must be British then.

Re:Ok

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You deny the rich are getting richer based on percentage of yearly income?

Yup. The Current Population Survey says that real earning for male members of the population has remained unchanged since 2002, and for female members of society the median has actually gone down very slightly as demographics shift. The rich are not getting richer. The earnings figures are pretty stable.

Based on total accumulation?

I don't understand. Are you trying to say that there are some rich people with a big pile of money somewhere in, like, a cave or something? I'd love to hear how you measure that.

Based on percentage of the wealth in this country?

According to the latest figures, the middle class expanded slightly last year because the stock market underperformed. So by percentage of investment assets, no, the rich are not getting any richer. The total wealth held by the rich declined in the 2003-2004 fiscal year.

You deny thousands of people are dead because of the war in Iraq?

That's many thousands fewer than would have been dead if not for the war in Iraq. Saddam was murdering 30,000 people a year on average, and the terrorists about 7,000 more on average. According to ICRC estimates, the total dead in the war in Iraq since March 2003, military and civilian, is between 9,400 and 11,800. So we've saved the lives of over 62,000 people.

Get pissed already.

No, thank you. I prefer to save my uppity indignation for stuff that's actually related in some way to reality. But if you want to keep chanting the same old tired lines without bothering to look at the actual data, that's fine. It's a free country. Knock yourself out.

Re:Ok

[rpillala]

Maybe what you mean is that you hope that this isn't true. The question of what we believe or what we'd like to believe is less relevant here. I also think that no amount of revealed corruption will get people off their ass enough to fight a civil war. People are just too apathetic for this to happen.

Or maybe it's not apathy. Maybe it's the notion many people hold that politics, while an interesting topic for conversation, shouldn't affect daily life.

Re:Ok

[spitzak]

I should point out that most knowledgable people know these problems do not mean that Bush stole the election. For the electronic voting machines to have actually changed the election result would require unrealistic scenariors where 70% or more of the voters in those counties voted for Kerry, while mysteriously neighbor counties voted for Kerry only 49% of the time. That did not happen. But that does not mean that nothing happened either. Also there is certainly the possibility of machines being fixed the other way to throw votes to Kerry, finding these would help a lot in convincing everybody to fix the system. This is actually the best time to investigate these machines as it *won't* cause political turmoil.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Witness Ukraine where a lot of people don't want a suspected cheater to take office

Is that like how alleged terrorists allegedly flew planes into the world trade center?

Re:Ok

[itwerx]

According to ICRC estimates, the total dead in the war in Iraq since March 2003, military and civilian, is between 9,400 and 11,800.

I dunno about all the rest but this caught my eye.
I've been reading estimates in the news of the Iraqi civilian death-toll being over 100,000.
So, while we're on the topic, do you have anything to back these statements up?

Re:Ok

[KDan]

Indeed. Countless great men throughout the ages have deemed their freedom to be worth fighting and dying for. The people who founded your country sure did.

Daniel

Re:Ok

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I've been reading estimates in the news of the Iraqi civilian death-toll being over 100,000.

That figure came from a widely discredited Lancet study. A few seconds of googling will yield up all the detail you could ever want, but basically the people who conducted that study used bogus methodology to produce a number with a margin of error of anywhere between about 9,000 and about 200,000, then they split the difference and reported a figure of about 100,000.

The study was complete crap. The instant it hit newsstands, critical reviews began to appear. It was discredited in about a day, but that wasn't until after people like yourself got duped by misleading headlines based on shoddy research.

ICRC says 9,400 to 11,800, Coalition and Iraqi, military and civilian. That does not count foreign fighters, who have no legal standing and of whom thousands have been killed by Coalition forces in recent weeks. I should have mentioned that; sorry.

Re:Ok

[trixillion]

I know about the rest. But even if I didn't, it would be obvious that the grandparent' remarks don't address the great grandparent's assertions. The grandparent shoud take a course in logic and rhetoric.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

The options are either that the election was rigged or that I'm living in a retarded country. I don't want to live in a retarded country.

Re:Ok

[goatan]

Innocent until proven guilty.

Re:Ok

[trixillion]

That's pretty funny. Would mod you up if I had the points.

Re:Ok

[Doc Ruby]

No, YOU are insane. You'd rather believe that the election was legit, even if it wasn't? As long as most of us have reasonable faith in our electoral process, those who control it can get away with pretty much anything. The alternative is democracy. Remember that?

Re:Ok

[Doc Ruby]

Moreover, what will you believe if these claims turn out to be false? That therefore there was *no* fraud in the Florida votes? That's how disinformation works: Dan Rather reports on simulated memos as if they're authentic, so the facts that even the simulations contain are thrown out, too. And Karl Rove laughs all the way to the White House.

Re:Ok

[Profane MuthaFucka]

The founding fathers seriously considered installing a King. They also considered the common rabble to be too stupid to effectively govern themselves, thus the Republic instead of a purer form of democracy.

OK, I stated that a little harshly, but the idea that the founding fathers were true liberal idealists is not quite true. They were a flawed bunch, some of them very very flawed. Thankfully, what they came up with worked OK, and has been able to change with the times.

Re:Ok

[Guppy06]

Meh. Something for the electors to consider next Monday.

Stuff like this is why we have the Electoral College to begin with.

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, you commie chinko pig!

I want to know that my rights have not been trampled on and that the election process cannot be bought and sold like stock on the open market.

Perhaps your liberty is worth so little that you would prefer not to know, but I tend to think that most fo the country wouldn't agree with you.

Re:Ok

[Just Some Guy]

You are correct. I thought (and still think) that my original post was fairly clear about that, but I seem to be in the minority.

Re:Ok

[NeMon'ess]

You didn't answer my question. I don't care about the median. I care about the top earning 1, 5, 10% of the population and did their earnings make up a greater or lesser percentage of total earnings.

I measure total accumulation as including property and investments.

It's not about what change happened last year. It's about the change over the past ten, twenty, and thirty years.

I'll get back to you when I have some numbers and sites for you to look at.

Re:Ok

[NeMon'ess]

Found some tables from census.gov that make my point very well. From 1967 to 2001 the top 5% share of aggregate income increased from 17.5% to 22.4%. In fact the share of aggregate income for the bottom 80% declined. The top 20% increased from 43.8% to 50.1%.

This happened because while the income of the 50th percentile increased from $32,000 in 1967 to $42,000 in 2001, in the 90th percentile the numbers went from $67,000 to $113,000. At the 95th percentile, $85,000 became $150,000.

Thus, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Re:Ok

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Wow. It just goes to show you that Google has done more to enable disinformation and falsehood than any other force in recent memory. Hell, maybe going back to the printing press.

You don't understand the numbers you cited. They don't say what you want them to say.

Silly rabbit.

Re:Ok

[NeMon'ess]

Wait! Come back! Tell me what they really say! Otherwise I'll be none-the-wiser and keep "misinforming" people more foolish than I.

Re:Ok

[NeMon'ess]

I presume you refer to the buying power with that money? How this group disagrees with the CPI's inflation adjustments? How according to them people's earnings and compensation have increased?

Re:Ok

[NeMon'ess]

Rep Ron Paul of Texas' speech to Congress makes a lot of sense to me. He argues that inflation is hurting lower and middle class americans and needs to be stopped. That means paying down the debt and not running budget deficits. What do you think of it?

Re:Ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, the only right most of my countrymen seem willing to fight for is the right to paaaaaaaaaaaaarty.

Would it even make a difference...

[ragingtory]

There weren't many electronic voting machines in Flordia in 2000 --> would this make a huge difference in a House race? and I can see the response now... yes yes - the 512 votes or whatever for Bush... "every vote counts"

Re:Would it even make a difference...

[Danse]

There weren't many electronic voting machines in Flordia in 2000 --> would this make a huge difference in a House race? and I can see the response now... yes yes - the 512 votes or whatever for Bush... "every vote counts"

So what was the point of your post? That it wouldn't have made a difference in some races, or that it would have made a difference in the biggest race? Or both?

Re:Would it even make a difference...

[spacecowboy420]

If you had read the article, you would have found out this application was running, in florida, in 2000 - and it was much more than "the 512 votes or whatever for Bush..."

Re:Would it even make a difference...

[mwvdlee]

Or the simple fact that it WOULD have made a difference? If "512" votes were enough to elect Bush, those same votes would have been enough to elect Gore so yes, it IS important.

Republicans? Criminal?

[revscat]

Noooo! They're the party of law and justice, morality, and ethics! Why, it is completely CRAZY to think that a Republican congressmen would do such a thing! And even if it IS true (which, of course, it isn't) it's just an isolated incident and says nothing about the character of the party itself. Why, I myself would NEVER support such a thing, and I'm a conservative! (More of a libertarian, really, which increases my credibility.)

Besides, you know that both sides do the same thing, so whatcha gonna do LOL! That's the way the world works, doncha know! No need to get upset!

Remember: It's a republic, NOT a "democracy." Calling America a "democracy" is just liberal propaganda.

Look, over there! Two guys who want to get married, and they're both abortionists! We're winning the war! Propaganda is king!

Re:Republicans? Criminal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember: It's a republic, NOT a "democracy." Calling America a "democracy" is just liberal propaganda.

True, we live in a republic not a democracy. But you know what, the use of the words republic and democracy in describing our form of government have absolutely no relation to the names of the two political parties. Republicans, despite their name, aren't in favor of making our country more of a republic and less of a democracy any more than democrats are going to make us more a democracy and less a republic. We are a republic, period, and that's the way it is.

Re:Republicans? Criminal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your humor/sarcasm detector; it doesn't seem to be working correctly.

Re:Republicans? Criminal?

[CaptRespect]

Wow, I think there is more to this whole name thing than meets the eye.

Republicans call the country a Republic all the time.
Democrats refer to it as a Democracy.

Liberal has been a term that republicans say has been hijacked by the "left", but is always used to describe the most left leaning people.

What if republicans just turned Liberal into a dirty word to help keep the Libertarians down?

Of course there is the Green party, but they are just a bunch of stupid hippies.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

How do we know this isn't Karl Rove setting us up, the way he set up Dan Rather?

And for God's sake, why didn't this come out 4 years ago? (you know, besides the murder of an investigator and the poisoning of a pet and oy vey...)

Re:zerg

[BandwidthHog]

How do we know this isn't Karl Rove setting us up, the way he set up Dan Rather?

<blink>

Ding, ding, ding!

</blink>

It's parody. Anything questioning the legitimacy of the 2004 outcome, no matter how ludicrous or well reasoned, can now clearly be shown to have been inspired by this, uhh, piece.

Re:zerg

[finkployd]

How do we know this isn't Karl Rove setting us up, the way he set up Dan Rather?

I hadn't heard this one before... Rove forced Rather to not check sources or even get competent document experts to validate the memos?

Finkployd

Re:zerg

[Anonymous Coward]

"How do we know this isn't Karl Rove setting us up, the way he set up Dan Rather?"

Dan Rather wasn't "set up". For an experienced journalist, mistaking a Microsoft Word printout for a 1960's army record really is a sign of senility or other brain dysfunction.

The whole thing was so stupid that one really has to wonder whether it wasn't done by Republicans themselves to immunize themselves against Bush's abysmal record.

Re:zerg

[k_187]

no, by denying it before CBS broadcasted it, Rove gave credence to the fact that it was real, if it wasn't why were they denying it? So when it turned out to be fake, CBS got egg all over its face. Clever, I must admit.

Re:zerg

[MasterOfMagic]

That doesn't liberate CBS news and Dan Rather from their obligation to check their sources.

Re:zerg

[An Onerous Coward]

I think the problem is, Rather checked the memos with the White House first. It sounds like he was working under the assumption that, if the information contained therein just didn't jibe with the facts, they would warn him against using them.

The fact that the White House did nothing prior to the story would indicate that they either had no knowledge that discredited the memos, or that they knew the memos were fraudulent and were waiting for the story to run so they could ruin Dan Rather and get the spotlight on the documents themselves and off Bush's military record.

Re:zerg

[finkployd]

I agree with what you say but I think it was more the immature and irresponsible way in which Rather handled the documents after doubt was cast on them that hurt his career. He sounded like a whiny, clueless kid who got caught doing something wrong. He dismissed critics (who turned out to be right) in a very unprofessional way and his remose was too late and seemed only directed at the fact that he got caught.

Even today you see "professional" news personalities more outraged at the existence of the webloggers who "outted" the documents as false than the fact that false documents were reported as true. This is very telling of the state of news today.

Finkployd

wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay?

[imsmith]

The problem with this story is that it is too fantastic. Even if it were true, the depth of the corruption is so widespread, among so many high-profile characters and big power families, that it requires a suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. Security through incredulity, anyone?

Conspiracy theorists of the world unite.

Re:wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay?

[krymsin01]

You know, I thought the same thing about how the Catholic church gave safe passage to Nazis when the war was ending...

Re:wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay?

[xenocide2]

My favorite part was when his boss died shortly before telling him that it went "all the way to the top."

Re:wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay?

[Passman]

The problem with this story is that it is too fantastic. Even if it were true, the depth of the corruption is so widespread, among so many high-profile characters and big power families, that it requires a suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. Security through incredulity, anyone?

No doubt.
After all this would be as impossible as say the Catholic church covering up widespread abuse of children by priests for 20+ years. If such a thing had occured someone, somewhere would have said something long before now. Right???

Re:wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay?

[rpillala]

Suspension of disbelief is required from a story that presents things you know to be untrue or are technically impossible. Like Nemo the talking fish. Whereas with this story there's no basis on which we should have belief in these officials. Do we have any reason to believe that a group of high ranking politicians is incorruptible? Do we have personal knowledge of them that rules out such behavior?

People don't obtain power by shying away from questionable strategies.

Re:wow, is this the next Oliver Stone screenplay?

[imsmith]

The suspension is of the idyllic notion that is the esteemed ideal of American government, namely that it is a democracy populated by noble do-gooders seeking the best for the Nation. This is the ideal established by 50 years of public education's civics classes and people want to believe it.

Additionally, the scope of the corruption is the thing of movies - we can easily imagine DeNiro as Al Capone or Beatty as Bugsy Siegel pulling threads of influence to advance their position - so seeing the sitting President acting more like a gangster than Lincoln or Washington requires a suspension of disbelief because you 'know' that Presisdents 'don't act like that'.

Political corruption usually templates out in a way that the big cheese is involved after the crime in the cover up - a la Watergate and Iran-Contra - not as the initiator of the crime, not as the facilitator of the crime through intermediaries clearly connected to the principal, and not as an attacker and enemy of the Constitution.

Dubious

[MBCook]

I'm with the other people in this thread. I think this fake. There is no real evidence and it just sounds fishy.

I know there are many here at /. who would like to see a story like this be true (both for political reasons and for anti-e-voting reasons (I'm in this second group)). But if this has ANY truth to it, here is my guess:

It's a half-truth. The guy was paid to write a program to do it as an exercise to see how simple it would be to do. For all we know it was requested as part of a security review to be turned over to the company that made the e-voting equiptment to show them security holes that people were concerned about.

Now I have no proof, but if this is true at all, that would be my guess. And, of course, there is nothing wrong or illegal about writing such a program unless you intend to use or distribute it, which we also don't know about.

Re:Dubious

[bibliophage]

I think it's safe to be skeptical but open-minded. I'd love to see more evidence than just some guy's affidavit.

Re:Dubious

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

He should opensource this vote-flipping program.

Of course, no true nix-geek would touch it: it was written in VB5.5 (not even 6 or .NET) for Windows, in 2004. /shudders

Re:Dubious

[jeif1k]

For all we know it was requested as part of a security review to be turned over to the company that made the e-voting equiptment to show them security holes that people were concerned about.

That interpretation makes no sense to me: why would they carry out a security audit in that way? If they did, that alone would demonstrate complete incompetence in security matters.

Now I have no proof, but if this is true at all, that would be my guess.

I don't know whether the original claim is true, but if it is, your analysis just doesn't work.

Re:Dubious

[Curtman]

it was written in VB5.5 (not even 6 or .NET) for Windows, in 2004.

I don't blame you for not RTFA, but its in the first sentance of the Slashdot headline for christ sakes.

• In the year 2000, Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney...

Re:Dubious

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

My mistake. I meant this:

Of course, no true nix-geek would touch it in 2004: it was written in VB5.5 (not even 6 or .NET) for Windows.

I went back to the article to re-check that it was actually VB5.5.

Re:Dubious

[DrSkwid]

sentence

Christ's sake

Re:Dubious

[Curtman]

You win. Proceed to the nearest goatse display to collect your prize.

Opinion Journal investigation on same

[revscat]

Story here. Talks about this case as well as other vote fraud cases in Florida in 2000 and 2004, how the governor shut down investigations, and the entire criminal web of Republican political bosses.

Screw the bastards. Line em up and shoot em dead. America deserves better than these facsists. Anyone who partakes in this is an enemy of the people and the country and should be taken out. They're usurping our very democracy, and the apologists and propagandists can similarly line up against a wall.

Assholes. Yes, I am pissed, and no, I won't calm down. And screw "appearances", while we're at it.

Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same

[xenocide2]

That article keeps getting stupider and stupider. I quit reading at the comparison of Enron to Nigerian money scams.

Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same

[stoborrobots]

You do realise that that's the same article as is linked in the summary, don't you?

Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same

[Anonymous Coward]

I quit reading at the comparison of Enron to Nigerian money scams.

Why is that stupid? I don't feel like looking up the numbers, but I bet Enron bilked people (investors/employees) out of more money than the Nigerian money scams have.

Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same

[revscat]

They changed the /. article. When it was originally posted last night it was a link to the affidavit, not this story.

Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same

[robbway]

I also quit reading well before that. There are only two things in the article that are actually on-topic: the affidavit and the witness. Both are very biased (as they should be), but that's it. The rest of the article is speculation and regurgitation from many sources.

My BS sniffer twitched with this article. How convenient is it for a Republican politician to directly ask for code to rig the election? Isn't it easier to believe that he would ask for how Ne'er-do-wells would rig an election?

I'm using the Razor(TM) on this one. There are much simpler ways.

Re:Opinion Journal investigation on same

[fenris_23]

Tip: Don't write posts on the Internet that advocate lining people up and shooting them when one of those people happen to be the U.S. President (Unless you live in the U.K. and write for the Guardian of course).

Strange Bedfellows? Or Not?

[stinkyfingers]

I went on over to Google News to see what other news organizations are calling this item worthy enough to mention. Notice that "Conspiracy Planet" is referencing this same article. What does that say about Slashdot?

And what does it say about what Google defines as news?

[Comment Template]

[Zarf]

[tautological argument]

[straw-man]

[beat with stick]

[close with soviet russia joke]

Re:[Comment Template]

[Pig Hogger]

Where's the profit in all this????

Re:[Comment Template]

[chaoaretasty]

[tautological argument]

[straw-man]

[beat with stick]

[close with soviet russia joke]

In Soviet Russia stick beats YOU!

Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not?

[alatesystems]

It clearly shows the bi-partisan nature of /. editors. At slashdot you get both sides, the anti-bush side, and the pro-kerry side.

Unfair and Imbalanced, they skew, you decide.

DU dismissed

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the tinfoilers at Dummie Underground dismissed this.

Undetectable?

[AlexeiMachine]

Could he be the same guy who wrote Microsoft's robust security features?

Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not?

[revscat]

What does that say about Slashdot?

What does it say about your dependence upon straw man arguments? This may or may not be true, but what sites reference it or do not reference says nothing about the same. Given the history of the Republicans to engage in and condone rampant criminality it certainly passes the smell test.

Conspiracy Dundee says...

[humuhumunukunukuapu']

You call that a conspiracy theory?

THIS is a conspiracy theory!

Why don't we....

[Anonymous Coward]

.... just post Fark's front page up here and be done with it.

Overflow Bug?

[cyranoVR]

I remember reading somewhere that a few buggy voting machines in a backwater county (NC?) were found to be "resetting" when they tallied over 32,767(?) votes for a candidate - i.e. an overflow error.

As a result, certain precincts that swung heavily for a candidate would end up going the other way after that candidate's votes went over the limit, rolling back to zero. Sounds too stupid to be true [why would they only allocate 8 bits of memory to the vote counting???], but that's what I read somewhere.

So...maybe what happened here is that "they" had the "backdoor" coded to look like this bug. That way, blame could never be directly assigned if it was detected....

That said, Online Journal appears to be the "Liberal NewsMax" so it's difficult to take this report at face value without some sort of accredited, independent verfication (good luck). What's interesting is that the author seems more concerned with the sordid details of how the funding for a "Visual Basic 5 to be ported to Unix" [Note: o_0??] prototype (Erm...why didn't he just write a check? Them Oilmen got a lot of the green stuff).

[The preceding is conjecture and from memory - I'm sure my fellow /.'ers will fetch the appropriate links :P]

Re:Overflow Bug?

[cs668]

8 bits signed would flip at 128 so I think you meant 16 bits.

Re:Overflow Bug?

[Anonymous Coward]

why would they only allocate 8 bits of memory to the vote counting?

8 bits is enough to represent the numbers 0-255. I think you mean 15 bits, or at least a signed 16 bit word

Re:Overflow Bug?

[TaxSlave]

YOu heard wrong. The backwater county (actually a frontwater county) is Carteret County, and the voting machines actually lost votes. Only one race was directly affected due to the closeness, and that race is being re-run in that county very soon.

Re:Overflow Bug?

[Pathetic Coward]

>why would they only allocate 8 [actually 16] bits of memory

Because the guys who wrote that piece of crap software didn't know that an "integer" in the programming environment they were using would overflow at 32767. They didn't bother to check, either because they didn't know about overflows, didn't anticipate a vote count over 32767, or (most likely to me) thought "integer" behaved the same as in the 32-bit environment they were used to.

From other information I've seen about this system it looks like it was written in an obsolete version of Visual Basic and Access, probably something that had been on the manufacturer's shelf for years. No one wanted to spend the money to upgrade to something current. I suspect the source code no longer exists. And, yes, this does happen in the real world.

Oh, no.

[RealProgrammer]

Now this will be added to the urban legends about vote fraud and minority disenfranchisement, and we'll get to hear about it ad infinitum.

Thanks a lot.

reads like a great movie

[QX-Mat]

honestly, as a european citiizen, i say nothing more than this:

fuck me. this bloke deserves a pulizer (?) prize- either for being (and i truely hope) the greatest whistle blower of any generation, or someone to surpass even the great Dan Brown when it comes to suspense!

PLEASE, SOMEONE, PLEASE, substantiate more of this information with links, references, things I can obtain myself. Do so, and the student world will find out- trust me!

Matt

Re:reads like a great movie

[cariaso1]

The part that seemed most hollywood was the bit about the inspector general auditor ending up dead in valdosta. I've been unable to find anything to validate the death, but florida does have a real inspector general auditor named Mr. Raymond Lemme Just search for his name in this document.
http://www.dot.state.fl.us/businessmodel/pdf/Augus t%202003.pdf
I suspect a death like the one described would make some news. Can anybody find it?

Re:reads like a great movie

[cariaso1]

Coral cache link.

Why doesn't slashdot do this automatically yet?

Re:reads like a great movie

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is all the info you need!

Re:reads like a great movie

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because Coral caches aren't accessable behind most corporate firewalls, thanks to the rather odd decision to make it run on port 8090.

Given the choice between a link that works, albiet slowly, for everyone, and a link that doesn't...

Link to the affadavit

[menscher]

Obviously the .pdf of an affadavit could be faked, but it still makes interesting reading. Especially since it describes how his program worked. ;)

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/12/images/CC_Af fidavit_120604.pdf

what the hell

[Rhinobird]

He says this is for the 2000 election. Wasn't that the one where we had weeks and weeks of vote workers looking at dangling chad? That is, the ballots were peices of cardboard that people poked holes through. How the hell do you program a piece of paper?

Re:what the hell

[OAB_X]

Elsewhere in the story he says that

At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach County, Florida.

So much for that idea. He was two years off.

His mind was changed, however, when the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the computer program was going to be used to suppress the Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic registrations.
Did he get that idea after seeing Fahrenheit 9/11?

Re:what the hell

[stoborrobots]

So much for that idea. He was two years off.

Maybe, maybe not... http://enight.dos.state.fl.us/elections/resultsarc hive/Index.asp?ElectionDate=11/5/02&DATAMODE=

What you want to believe is irrelevant.

[Pyromage]

Why the concern about "want to believe this, want to believe that"? Why don't you consider the facts that are there. Fact 1: This guy could be lying. Fact 2: regardless of his thoughts, the election results do not make much sense. Take a look at my roomate's page. He's compiled a bit of data, from official sources (linked to from the page), that brings into question the results of the election. Real numbers. Scary, isn't it?

Re:What you want to believe is irrelevant.

[Grym]

Fact 2: regardless of his thoughts, the election results do not make much sense.

No, they don't make sense if you're wrapped-up in the message the democratic party developed this election--"Anybody but Bush!"

I'm not saying that there wasn't fraud. There may have been. We simply don't know, and I hope the authorities thoroughly and publicly investigate every accusation. However, what I am saying is that this notion that fraud must have occurred because John Kerry lost HAS TO STOP.

Like the linked parent's roommate's page, for instance is ridiculous. SO WHAT if the proportion of democratic votes don't match the proportion of registered democrats? Since when is everyone required or even expected to vote along party lines? What if, rather than a national conspiracy of unparalleled magnitude to disenfranchise democrats, people simply voted Republican? What if it turns out that all or at least a disproportionate (>50%) amount of the independent voters (or even conservative democrats), turned off by the Democratic Party's embracement of extremists like Michael Moore (I, a registered Independent, distinctly remember him being ON-STAGE at the national convention), voted Republican?

If the liberal democrats in this country can't accept that their candidate lost without--or at least before--any definitive evidence (and I would hardly classify this guy's nonsensical accusations as that) to prove otherwise, they're only going to marginalize themselves in the minds of reasonable Americans more than they already have. And, even though I voted for Bush, I really hope that doesn't happen. We need a healthy, viable opposition for our system to work.

-Grym

never mind

[Rhinobird]

I didn't read the article to well the first time around...devil's in the details and all.

I say he should produce his source code.

Possibly a troll article?

[nuxx]

Please note this article from the article:

People may wonder why a group of intelligence insiders would come forward to a non-major media outlet with such tantalizing information at this time. The corporate-beholden media cannot be trusted to report such a news story. A common theme from all the intelligence and ex-intelligence officials with whom I have communicated is that George W. Bush made a major mistake in attacking and purging the clandestine service of the CIA. The "agency," which extends far beyond the confines of Langley, Virginia, is having its revenge. It has willingly exposed a portion of a traditional clandestine CIA money route to expose the vote scam that was used to ensure Bush's election.

That's practically a tell-tale sign of a fake article...

While the article is interesting, the connections run all the way to 419-ers...

I want more info. After all, extraordinary claims (like these) demand extraordinary proof.

Corrections

[superyooser]

You mean like a plummeting dollar, a failing economy, a losing war, an unprecedented transfer of money to the wealthiest few, thousands of war deaths, and a dismantling of civil rights and our constitution?

The dollar is falling; it will rise again. Yes, we will get through it. The economy is not failing. We are winning the war. Here's a lesson on tax cuts. War deaths - deaths in a volunteer military, fighting for our freedom and security. The only loss of civil rights is from the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance "Reform" Act, which prohibits paid political speech 30 days before an election (or something close to that). The Constitution is being upheld strictly (*cough*) by the administration.

Re:Corrections

[hondo77]

War deaths - deaths in a volunteer military, fighting for our freedom and security.

Damn straight. Just think of how many lives would have been saved if we had invaded Iraq before 9/11 and taken Saddam out. Oh, wait a second...that would be zero.

Feel more secure yet?

Re:Corrections

[Jazu]

Money != speech

Habeas Corpus > money influencing elections

Re:Corrections

[jeif1k]

The dollar is falling; it will rise again.

Eventually, perhaps, when it has been devalued to the point to eliminate the trade deficit and when a fiscally responsible president comes into power again (Republicans need not apply--they love running up big deficits).

The economy is not failing. We are winning the war.

Geez. I thought people like you didn't believe in taking drugs.

Here's a lesson on tax cuts.

Not only is the "lesson" utter nonsense, its attribution to Kamerschen is as phony as your other "facts".

Re:Corrections

[spacecowboy420]

Pay no attention to the troll.

Re:Corrections

[Passman]

So tell me,

What color is the sky on your planet?

Re:Corrections

[spacecowboy420]

I find it utterly astounding that some (such as the grand-parent) are able to completely ignore facts if it contradicts their impractical idealism.

BTW, his people only *TALK* against drugs, homosexuality, and for peace, and equality, while "take"ing great liberty in their hypocrisy while achieving none of the former.

You know, it's one thing for a rock star to be a drugged out pervert - that's what they tell you they are. It is another to be the highest rated conservative talk show host and a drug addict, or a god fearing bishop and a pedophile. Give me an honest sinner over a hypocrite any day.

Re:Corrections

[fiter]

What is there to think about?

Re:Corrections

[Associate]

Here I am, an honest sinner. What were you planning to do with me anyway?

Re:Corrections

[spacecowboy420]

I plan to have more respect for you than an self righteous hypocrite (read: right wing theocrat) - that didn't convey?

Re:Corrections

[Jahf]

Oh come on ... a mural found in Iraq -after- 9/11 is supposed to make one "think"? I am assuming by "think about this" you are inferring "look at this and you'll see a connection".

Bogus.

Yes, once 9/11 happened there were people all OVER the Muslim world that were radical and embraced the death and destruction.

That doesn't mean they were guilty of committing the act.

Think about this: if we had been able to prevent 9/11 that mural wouldn't have existed ... though I think in the end we would have invaded Iraq anyway. It is obvious (to me, I'm not claiming to be able to know what you see) that there was twisted intel and intent fashioned before 9/11. 9/11 just made it that much easier.

Does having a Nazi swastika in a militia HQ of some radical fascist group at some point after WWII mean that the people there are Nazis and committed murders during the Holocaust? No, the "neo" in "neo-Nazi" is added for a reason. Are they twisted and possibly evil jerks? Yes. Do they represent everyone in their culture or mean that they are guilty of war crimes? No.

Do I think there are Al-Qaeda in Iraq? Sure ... but FAR FAR more with far more popular support because we invaded, not because of 9/11.

Re:Corrections

[Associate]

Come on. You know I'm just being an ass. But wasn't that the point?

Re:Corrections

[tsm_sf]

The dollar is falling; it will rise again

Like the South?

Re:Corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

After a long day of work, I sure wish I could divorce myself from reality as easily as you can. Could you advise me as to what drugs you're taking to reach this state?

Re:Corrections

[adamh526]

We're not winning the war. The war is against a global insurgency - not simply Iraq. "Winning" in Iraq would be a huge gift to bin Laden and al Qaeda as they are religiously motivated by the US oppression of Muslims around the world. A democratic and secular government in Iraq will simply justify their rhetoric and fuel their hatred of us even more.

Saying we're fighting for our "freedom and security" is ignorant at best. We're doing whatever it takes to maintain our national standard of living - and if that means supporting corrupt regimes (Saudi Arabia) and oppressing a few people (Muslims) along the way, then so be it, right? I'm not saying it's right/wrong or good/bad for a sovereign nation to protect the interests of its citizens, but we need to see the "War on Terror" for what it is.

Spreading democracy is NOT an effective way to win a war against an insurgency that will stop at nothing to kill us unless we budge on some foreign policy issues - ultimately going against our own self-interests (not gonna happen). So, no, we're not winning.

Re:Corrections

[strudeau]

> > The dollar is falling; it will rise again
> Like the South?

No. Like Jesus.

Re:Corrections

[4of12]

The dollar is falling; it will rise again.

I'm betting it won't rise much.

However, if you're quite certain about the dollar's future strength then you might want to take out some futures contracts and sell off some of those soon-to-be-worthless euroes and yen.

East Asian central bankers with some US$1.5e12 and holders of petrodollars would love it if you were right about the dollar regaining its value in the future.

OTOH, it might just be that the U.S. has been borrowing so much (US$33e12 total debt) that dollars are everywhere.

Waiting for the dollar to recover seems akin to waiting for the pound sterling to recover to $4.86 several decades ago. Maybe there are still people out there waiting for the dollar to recover from its drop in the early 1970s, too.

Not me. From where I stand, I see fiscal profligacy of the worse kind in my United States over the past several years. Domestically, I see price inflation, but no wage inflation, with higher interest rates needed to get our foreign creditors to buy treasury bills denominated in a devaluing currency.

I'm curious where the right-wing pundits will try to place the blame for the impending economic crunch now that those evil "Tax 'n Spend Liberals" have been chased completely out of all 3 branches of government. "Immigrants" have always been a favorite scapegoat...

Re:Corrections

[An Onerous Coward]

The dollar is falling. If Bush succeeds in privatizing social security, it will require going a couple trillion further into debt, and the dollar will fall still further.

Your "lesson on tax cuts" is both apocryphal and idiotic. First, when a tax cut is given to those who have the least, each dollar is more valuable (more likely to be spent on necessities) than if the same tax cut is given to those who pay the most. Second, it's inappropriate to describe those earning the least as "paying nothing" because the (non-PhD-holding) author has ignored payroll deductions. Finally, those who "paid nothing" are actually worse off than before the tax cut, because of corresponding cuts in government services to the poor.

Let's face it. The rich loved the tax cuts. The rest of us were hypnotized by a $300 check.

For a nice counter to this absurd analogy, find a copy of Al Frankin's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them". It has an illustrative dialogue between an imagined wealthy lawyer who made out like a bandit on Bush's tax cut, and a waitress whose small tax break was swamped by cuts in government services.

Regarding your barb towards the McCain-Feingold bill, why should having more money give you more control over the political process? Didn't we do away with that sort of thing in the 1800's?

Re:Corrections

[escher]

You mean it will rise to heaven and we'll never see it again?

Re:Corrections

[Profane MuthaFucka]

The term to use is "cheap labor conservative". Cheap labor is the goal here, and the conservative policies generally keep people poor, and thus willing to work cheap.

Re:Corrections

[puppet10]

Well it could be that the pound sterling could be $4.86 again sometime, just not through raising its value.

Re:Corrections

[hondo77]

Wow! Irrefutable proof that the Iraqi military hated the U.S.

And this is interesting because...?

Re:Corrections

[Nicksag33k]

Our tax system is out of date, try
http://fairtax.org/

Re:Corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'm sure we'd be hearing the same complaints if we invaded Afghanistan before 9/11.

Really?

[Safety Cap]

More of a libertarian, really, which increases my credibility.

In what way? By your naievté?

Oh, right. By the fact that the Libertarian plank is "government is corrupt and evil, and corporations are good and benign, therefore we need to deregulate all corps and then we can sue them if they go bad"? Sure, that will stop corps from taking shortcuts to make a profit. Oh, and if the company gets caught, they won't use their economic/legal power to reorganize into a sue-proof company, because only government is evil, right?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your humor/sarcasm detector; it doesn't seem to be working correctly..

[Alternative Comment Template]

[Kris_J]

[Comment Template]

Ohioan's should come out...

[bergeron76]

Case is holding a demonstration this week. Details are here.

I'm posting this because it's directly related to Wayne Madsen; so plz don't flag it as OT. It's a piece of the puzzle.

Re:Ohioan's should come out...

[bergeron76]

Oh yeah, it should be mentioned that "Wayne Madsen" probably doesn't exist. If you have confidential information and ask to "meet" with him, you're probably going to wind up 6 feet underground.

Wayne Madsen is a turnstyle person - aka, he's a group of people; very similar to the "Dread Pirate Roberts" (of Princess Bride fame).

Re:Ohioan's should come out...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.caseohio.info.nyud.net:8090/

Re:Ohioan's should come out...

[CrimsonAvenger]

"Dread Pirate Roberts" == Bartholomew Roberts, aka Black Bart. Probably the most successful pirate in history.

Online Journal?

[madstork2000]

Why is Slashdot linking to this shit? Next thing the Yeti hooker does DC from the National Inquirer will be front page slashdot.

First the online journal is essentially nothing but a Republican consiricy site. Its registered to a Bev Conover (courtesy of public WHOIS). There is a ton of anti-bush and anti rebulican shit. She must be a democrat cult hero. A quick google search turns up plenty of stuff. Bev apparently has not liked Bush since his pre-presidential days because in 1999 She shares credit for this article:

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/brambles/499/Bush /Hiding/hiding.html

Anyway back to the joke of an article. What any self respecting developer write a proof of concept tool thats main function is to be portable and cross platform with aproprietary language like VB? HELL NO. An undetecable application one definately would not start with a "proof of concept" VB application. Come on, an application that could be untracable would need to have very lowlevel access to the voting machines OS, which by its very nature would make it difficult to be portable. Most cross platform applucations are very bloated, because they need tons of extra code to work on the myriad combination of OSs.

The premise sounds like it is out of one of those cheesy hollywood scripts, where they have the alien computer infiltrated by a virus that crashes a fleet of motherships in about 2 minutes. Or the hacking of the supper secret password from an outdated mac.

Wayne Madsen, the guy who reported this story must have about zero knowledge of programming. Or he's getting his "story" ideas from his left leaning buddies in hollywood.

Interestingly enough he was a cyberterrorist panelist (http://iml.dartmouth.edu/ists/madsen.html) and supposedly has these credentials (taken from the panelist bio website):

Mr. Madsen has some twenty years experience in computer security and data privacy. As a U.S. Naval Officer he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State.

He has also been on many mainstream networks as guest commentator, so he is not totally devoid of creditials.

But any tech creditials are lost when we find out he sports an AOL email address (from http://www.lebanonwire.com/0410/04102002LW.asp): Wmadsen777@aol.com

Damn, I am going to sign up for AOL now that I know former NSA guys use it, it MUST be good. Either that or perhaps he embelished his NSA credentials a bit, anyone who can honestly believes that massive voter fraud was carried out by a VB programmer, must have been the janitor.

Anyway, this guys blog does a better job of me at discrediting this writer, who certainly seems to either be very ignorant of programming, or else he has an agenda to push. http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2004/11/round-two-w ayne-madsen-on-funding-for.html

Finally, the "programmer", Clint CUrtis who claims to have written this software operates an anti-Bush, site calling for the boycott of many companies and their products. The site is at: http://justaflyonthewall.com

BTW this bald face liar generously makes this software available at: http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefraudprogram. htm, but I don't think its open source.

That high quality VB code is sure to make it into diebolds upand coming models.

Additionally, I dug up references to the Clint Curtis guy, apparently the issue goes back way before the 2000 election (here is an article from 2002, responding to similar voting fraud claims): http://www.informedvolusian.com/2002/Issue_24/issu e_24_article_1.htm

Does this shit BELONG ON SLASHDOT? Why is it that we don't tolerate FUD from Mircoshit, but political FUD is apparently A Okay. We're supposed to be nerds, and look at things objectively. I guess that only applies to technology. Apparently, (at least according to the editors) we're mindless sheep and will believe any written word on the internet like everyone else if the topic is not tech related.

As a side note, I thought the politics section was temporary? I'm definately changing my prefs to avoid this kind of CBS journalism on Slashdot.

-MS2k

Re:Online Journal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are all your soft-links there to advertisements? You must be cleaning up.

Re:Online Journal?

[shadowxtc]

Consider this - versions of Microsoft Word have been written in VB.

Then, consider this - what better way to keep us laughing instead of paranoid than to say "Bush stole the election... with VB!"?

Who knows...

Re:Online Journal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss your lithium dose this morning?

Re:Online Journal?

[madstork2000]

I am not affiliated with any of the thrash that I linked to, but you make a good point all the left wing conspiricy sites are filled with ads .

But that certainly is another point to consider. Hey lets make up a sensational story about vote rigging. It will draw millions of hits, and we'll not only make the Republicans look bad, but we'll line our pockets as well....

Re:Online Journal?

[CptNerd]

... it worked for Michael Moore and Al Franken...

Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe you have the audacity to point out (falsely) a "disjunctive syllogism", and then proceed to make the biggest example of such I've read so far in the comments to this story:

When was the last time a Republican actually broke the law? And don't give me any of that Halliburton shit, considering Kerry's connections to big money.

Right there. Those two sentences absolutely reek of primary cognitive failure. You have defective headmeat.

Way to go, dipshit. You've just proven that you don't know shit about shit.

Ok, well, I'm glad you've managed to concrete your point of view with such respectable eloquence.

Some links I found for Clint Curtis

[juggleme]

So I Googled around for Clint Curtis, the guy who is making these claims, and found the affidavit mentioned in the story. If anyone else is interested in reading more information on an article they didn't read... ;)

Non-linkified because I'm going home from work soon and I want to go there sooner.

the affidavit:
http://www.rawstory.com/images/pdfs/CC _Affidavit_1 20604.pdf

his website (basically a big rant with a link):
http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/

his vote changing program:
http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefra udprogram. htm

code:
http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/VoteFrau dCode.zip

Re:Some links I found for Clint Curtis

[CGP314]

Non-linkified because I'm going home from work soon and I want to go there sooner.

the affidavit: http://www.rawstory.com/images/pdfs/CC_Affidavit_1 20604.pdf

his website (basically a big rant with a link): http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/

his vote changing program: http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefraudprogram. htm

code: http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/VoteFraudCode.zip

That took me to the count of 63 seconds to linkify. That includes 2 previews for the forgotten [BR] tags and removing the spaces you added to the links.

But I trust you fully enjoyed those 63 seconds of quality time at home.


Colin

Re:Some links I found for Clint Curtis

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm far from a vb programmer, but the code on that site looks useless. Looks like he just set up a "generic" database and whipped up a 5-minute gui front-end to fiddle some values in it.

I don't see anything that makes me think his code has any knowledge of a particular e-voting vendor's database format. I've heard that Diebold does use MS Access which is apparently what he's using, but if it is suppossed to work on diebold systems, there would have to be some other indication that the database has a larger structure than what his code "knows" about. Heck, his database is is named "Setup" -- despite their public display of ineptness, I can't believe that diebold or any other e-vote machine maker would name their vote records database "Setup."

In other words, his code doesn't seem to be even the barest possible minimum to be considered an actual proof of concept, much less a real tool for fraud.

It's just a mock-up is all.

Re:Some links I found for Clint Curtis

[criquet]

Actually the Diebold database name is "LocalDB" and the password is "password". To me, "Setup" is less likely to be a database file than some file that contains "DB" in the name.

Surprised.

[Deliveranc3]

I think it's kind of funny that everyone assumed it was going to be the republicans who would rig the vote.

I mean how else could they possibly win!

Re:Surprised.

[StalinJoe]

Paying people for their phonecam pictures of a favorable vote? Nah, rigging it is.

Things that have never happened to me or..

[foniksonik]

anyone I know (yes I'm in the USA and a citizen):

+ never had my privacy invaded by government or non-government individuals or organizations.

+ never been unreasonably detained - the closest ever was march of 2002 flying back to CA from NC - I had to take my shoes off and they took my 2 inch suisse army knife from it's keychain sheathe.

+ never felt like the economy of the nation I live in was going to go belly up and leave my world in shattered ruins.

+ never felt that my rights have been diminshed even in the least possible way, in fact I have more ways to express myself, more ways to share my views and absolutely no hint of having my freedom of speech oppressed or my freedom to life, liberty and property... I have more of each now than 2000.

+ never felt disenfranchised regardless of political persuasion or ethnicity

I live in Southern California so maybe that means I'm outside the influence of the oppressive forces that seem to be weighing on all the whiners out there.. or maybe I'm just a good little consumer who never does anything to get between the cross-hairs of the oppressors.. sorry, but I don't see any of it.

What I do see is the process of law and government being put under incredible scrutiny every hour of every day by the public, the media, watchdog groups, foreign nations and Slashdot... how many counts of abuse of power over US citizens have I seen in the last four years? very few considering how the current US Administration is supposedly doing irreparable harm to the nation.

I have seen the usual set of criminal conspiracies that seem to happen every decade, Michael Milken anyone? Robber Barons? and hey here's Enron and Arthur Andersen...

What I do see is that the availability of information has made everyone freakin' paranoid. You're all suffering from news overload on a day-to-day basis and coming to conclusions based on incomplete initiatives, incomplete results, incomplete disclosure and incomplete comprehension.

Take a break. Give the duly elected officials and their staff a chance to finish something before you begin your tirade of how said legislation is going to destroy all life as we know it.

It just ain't gonna happen. Capitalism and enlightened self-interest won't allow it. Go ahead and participate by writing to your congressmen and senators, local reps and signing initiatives and for God's sake pay your taxes but don't overpay... it's your money no need to give the Gov an interest free loan.. so participate and feel grateful that you live in a country where you can without worrying that someone is going to bomb your polling place.

Fraud will happen... criminals will be caught. That's how a free society based on law works.

If you don't have any faith in the system then move somewhere else. Just stop whining you whiners! A freakin' whambulance is on the way.

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[rritterson]

Let me guess...

You are an upper middle class white guy who lives in the suburbs far from any sort of diversity? (maybe there is a upper-middle class 'minority' somewhere in your neighborhood').

I used to live right in the middle of Minneapolis. I heard first hand accounts of voter intimidation.

And how would you know if you privacy had been invaded? The best invasions are the ones that go undetected.

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[Justice8096]

Actually, point 5 happens all of the time - at least since I started voting. Interestingly enough - I have had "ballots dissappear" both when Republican and Democrat. As for Fraud - no, criminals are rarely caught. But this has been happening all of the time. Before this scrutiny of elections, dead people were known to have a very good voting record. In Philadelphia it barely mattered, because the cemetery vote was firmly divided between Republican and Democrat (ah, but if you were third party, well...)

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[joelt49]

Here here! I agree completely. People bitch about how freedom of speech is taken away. There are the "Bush=Hitler" stickers still floating around (I saw some in D.C. over Thanksgiving weekend). However, stop and think for a second. If Bush were even close to being that bad, the first right you'd lose is the freedom to bitch about not having your rights. The right to free speech, and the right to bitch about not having it (yes, I realize that's an oxymoron) are the most effective means of keeping the government in check. Stop and ask yourself: What's the worst government abuse of power? I think the one /.'ers will be most familiar with is the DMCA, signed by Clinton in '98.

Oh, and to the previous poster: I'm an 18-year-old college student; my parents are lower-class parents (their combined gross income, before taxes or anything else, would be barely enough to cover cost of college, if I weren't getting such a nice financial aid package). I don't come from suburbs, I come from Wyoming. Do we have minorities? Not really. However, there are a bunch here on campus (I'm on the East Coast), and I still don't see any of this abuse. Do Republican and Democrat votes mysteriously disappear? Yes, but that's more of a local thing, rather than the vast national conspiracy.

What I really fear isn't so much the Patriot Act under a Republican administration as I do under a Democrat administration (see http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/26/23 11203&tid=158&tid=93&tid=103&tid=2 19 ).

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[sarlen]

I'm not sure that anyone casually reading Slashdot is qualified to claim, based on their personal experience, that unreasonable detaining has never happened.

Infact, we know it happens - the government detains what it calls "enemy combatants" in Gitmo and justifies their detainment without a lawyer by claiming they're not US citizens. Whether that's right or not, who knows, but we know it happens. I do think recently a judge ruled they had to be given trials eventually, though.

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[soloes]

"If you don't have any faith in the system then move somewhere else. Just stop whining you whiners! A freakin' whambulance is on the way."

You know I have never had any of the problems you spoke of from the government it self either,,,,,, but wait a government of the people by the people and for the people. I had my Kerry sign stolen 3 times out of my yard and one bumper sticker stolen by loud mouths like you who say if I don't like it leave.. how about this.. as an American, if I don't like it I will complain, and maybe complain loud enough and with enough other people to change the system.
That is what America is about and you Dictatorial arses don't like that then move to Saudi Arabia or someplace without a freedom of speech, but do not try to censor me you low life piece of phlegm caught in the mouth of a genital crab.

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[foniksonik]

Actually I live in one of the most diverse areas in the US. Orange County. No not the one you see on TV... I live about ten miles from Santa Ana where every sign is in Spanish, about 15 miles from Westminster where every sign is in Vietnamese, every year more than a hundred thousand Persians come to the local park to celebrate the biggest persian New Years celebration outside of the middle east, every saturday tens of thousands of orthodox Jews walk to temple down the streets of my city, I have Russian friends, Korean friends, Chinese friends, Persian friends, Palestinian friends, Jewish friends - from Israel, Armenian, Syrian, African - from Africa... it goes on.

I live in Irvine, near UCI - I'm not a student though, just live here.

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[foniksonik]

You do know that most of the people being detained as you described are those who are involved in fund raising right? Groups who solicit money or trade in black market goods to raise capital for terror organizations. These are business men who though they may not be holding weapons are in fact supplying the means and cover-stories for those who do.

These are the 'officers' of the terror groups, while the ones blowing themselves up are the 'enlisted men'.

Still they are personally responsible in the same way that officers in a formal military would be held responsible.

I live in a city with hundreds of thousands of Persians (Iranian and Iraqi), Afghans, Pakistanis, etc. My younger brother went to school with the son of a cousin to Saddam... I'm not hearing anything about people being detained, except when involved in the above activities with plenty of evidence backing up the claims and we're talking about isolated events.

There just isn't any evidence that people are being detained unjustly or unreasonably.

It may be that the evidence for why they are being detained is not being published for your consumption however, leading you to believe that they were just "in the wrong place at the wrong time" or some other likely story.

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[foniksonik]

Hello?

I didn't say stop expressing yourselves... I said stop whining and I have just as much right to say that as you do to whine. it was a suggestion, not an ultimatum.

The very fact that you and i are here having this so called conversation is evidence enough that your rights are being upheld. So stop saying they aren't... stop saying that the elected government is out to get you somehow.

I'm sorry your signs were stolen, did you report the vandalism of your property to the police? I'm sure there are similar cases on either side. Sounds like you were the victim of overly-passionate hooligans... not a national conspiracy.

You don't change anything by complaining. I've never once seen anything change because people complained about it. I've seen people get opportunities by being the 'squeaky wheel' but then they had to prove that they deserved the attention.

You change things by proving that there is a better alternative.

Kerry lost because he had no platform, no vision, nothing better to offer... he was nothing more than 'not Bush'. His campaign was a joke. For such a supposedly intelligent guy he didn't seem to get it. To get my vote you have to have a plan and that plan has to have the backing of people who know how to get things done. Where were his celebrity economic advisors, accounting experts, medical administration gurus, military strategists... there was absolutely no sign that Kerry had thought through any of the issues to the stage of implementation.. he was stuck on analysis the whole time.

It's not good enough to say there's a problem, you have to have a plan for a solution. He didn't have any. He had a few actors and musicians.. maybe they could have written a musical about something, "Team America" seemed to do pretty well.

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[Tyndmyr]

After reading this little gem filled with baseless assumptions and "common knowledge", I took the time to go through a few of your other posts, and found them to be, if possible, more idiotic than this. Another day, another foe...

Re:Things that have never happened to me or..

[foniksonik]

Typically my responses float just above the 'common knowledge' curve of the topic. Rarely am I competitive or combative though on occasion someone's attitude will particularly irk me. Then I tend to play 'devil's advocate' just to provide another POV. /. in particular has a majority population of like minded members who have already decided that some philosophies are invalid and evidence of ignorance without having taken the time to even investigate what those philosophies are all about, relying instead on their own insular opinion and commonly held beliefs.

As a broad minded individual with a wide array of interests in all areas of knowledge I enjoy bringing out counterpoints to these assumption based conclusions about non-/. approved beliefs.

I can't say I'm always concise or perfectly accurate but I do attempt to make compelling arguments when possible... also trying to address the post topic if not the submission topic.

I suggest that you hold judgement until the current politically charged atmosphere dissipates somewhat and more rational dicussions can begin again. Too many members here still have a chip on their shoulder over the past election and the issues related to it. Once they've let go of their burden then some intelligent conversation can occur. For the near future you can probably expect more gut/knee-jerk reactions... take them for what they are.

Liberty at stake here

[VernonNemitz]

In reviewing the previous posts, I see some concerns about a bloodbath. But remember this quote by Thomas Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants."

I'll make up a quote to go with it: "Those who rig elections obviously 'wish to not live' in a democracy. Perhaps their wish should be granted." Yet that means either Democracy will die, or election-riggers will die. IT ALSO DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN that various elected officials participated in the vote-rigging. The political parties are big enough that a right wing can do something without the moderate wing knowing about it. Sure, the uninformed will be happy to benefit from the results, but that does not mean they were active conspirators.

So, please be sure that the U.S. ONLY gets rid of actual vote-rigging ringleaders. The poor monkeys who did the dirty work should be forgiven as fast as they identify the ringleaders. Like Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, if the head is not chopped off, it will grow another body, and try again.

Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not?

[ForestGrump]

Well, the American press (other than tabloids) might self censor themselves against something this...for now. Wait till the evidence builds up. For now, write this off as a sensation story. Call me when something like BBC runs this story.

Unbelievable

[joelt49]

OK, this probably won't get read this far down. However, I have my own $.02 to add.

First, this story is essentially one guy's word against a bunch of other people's. How do we know he's not lying? The fact of the matter is, we have no objective (yes, objective) standard for weighing the truth value of this story, and so it's inappropriate to go and believe it.

Second, has anyone seen the vote-switching program? It requires access to not just the voting machine software, but the voting official who set it up! As a Diebold programmer pointed out, they program the code to accept _generic_ ballots, to be made by voting officials. Think about it. Although they can switch a vote from person A to person B, how do you know who person A is in the first place? Also, person A can change from time to time. Furthermore, do you know how many people you'd have to keep quiet about this in order to pull it off? It just isn't logistically possible.

Furthermore, as has been pointed out, this software could be created to just see how easy it would be to do. However, this guy just sets up a VB interface, and he makes basic assumptions about how the interface would work. In practice, you'd need to know the internal structure of the vote tally file, and that can change, as I said. And who the HELL would write this in VB?

Also, I'd like to point out that having a president win due to voter fraud won't cause the fall of the country. JFK did it in 1960, and we survived him (and his successor, and the Vietnam War, which Nixon got us out of).

I didn't get the time to read the whole article, as it's getting late; however, it's simply an amalgation of unsubstantiated rumors on an anti-Bush, anti-Repubican conspiracy site. Bias, anyone?

Lastly, I'd just like to point out that I'm tired of these baseless allegations coming out about voter fraud by the Republicans. Every single time an error with voting comes up, it's blown up by the media, but only if it somehow helps Republicans, and the facts are distorted to make a story seem more plausible. When it's shown that no conspiracy existed, it isn't reported. For example, the whole felon mess in FL in 2000? You hear the claims that more blacks were removed from the rolls than whites? Well, as a matter of fact, while that may be true in absolute terms, an investigation by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission found that, in fact, whites were actually disproportionately wrongly disenfranchised (because there are more black felons than white ones, probably because more black people live in poverty than white people). Did you hear about this in any sort of major way? Of course not, because the mainstream media is largely biased towards the liberal side (doubt me? I think the Dan Rather/forged memo scandal, the ABC memo saying that Bush should be held to a higher standard than Kerry, the editor of Newsweek saying that the media's positive coverage of Kerry would be worth 15%, later revised downward to 5%, in the polls, and the economy being spun as constantly bad, while the '96 economy was spun as good, despite the fact that they were comparable, shows that most of the media, except Fox and talk radio, were out to defeat Bush).

Oh, and to those who ask why more stories about republican voter fraud is coming out that democrat fraud, I say the answer is simple. The republicans don't care; they won. The democrats are trying to soil the republican victory, trying to find even the most improbable thread of illogic to convince themselves that the U.S. really wants someone like Kerry to be president. The republicans aren't turning over every stone looking for votes, the democrats are, and every time they see a situation where Kerry might have lost a vote due to simple mistakes, they cry wolf.

Re:Unbelievable

[An Onerous Coward]

While I don't think this story has any merit, your disbelief in the ability to program vote fraud is unwarranted.

You say that it's logistically impossible because there is no way of knowing which candidate will be which. Even if this was true, a corrupted voting machine in the right precinct could still swing an election.

Assume the existence of a corrupt machine that randomly (and I mean completely randomly) swapped one vote in ten from one candidate to another. Now, say that we place the machine in a heavily Bush-leaning county, where he is expected to get 80% of the vote.

Ten thousand votes are cast. Of the ten thousand, 8000 should be for Bush, 1000 should go to Kerry, and 1000 should go to Nader (just to make the math easy). But 800 Bush votes are randomly given to Kerry and Nader, while 100 Kerry votes and 100 Nader votes are divided between the other two candidates.

Grand total: Bush 7200 + 50 + 50 = 7300. Kerry 1000 + 400 + 50 = 1450. Nader 1000 + 400 + 50.

Conclusion: If you know that a precinct leans heavily in favor of the candidate you despise, you can program a machine "generically".

Further complaints: The VB script was just to demonstrate an example, and wasn't intended to run on the end systems. According to the claim, the end program was supposed to be portable (which I find odd, since I was under the impression that all the voting machines were Windows boxen).

Regarding your claims of "liberal media bias", I would point out that it was perfectly obvious that Fox News was out to defeat Kerry. Just one of the litany of examples: in the runup to the first debate, no other news organization was interested in the fact that John Kerry got a manicure prior to the debate. But Fox News managed to mention it on five separate occasions in their run-up to the debate itself.

You can disagree, but I see the ABC memo as not comparable to the FOX memos that were prominently displayed in "Outfoxed." The difference is, the memo is right. If Kerry distorts his record in Vietnam, and Bush distorts his reasons for dragging us into a new Vietnam, the latter should be much more relevant to the way we vote, and artificially making the two sides look equal in their distortions gives Bush an unfair advantage.

Say you're reporting on some scientific controversy. 99% of scientists studying the issue (say, evolution) say evolution is sound science, while 1% (all of whom graduated from Bob Jones University) discount the idea. There is no "balance" in giving equal time to both sides.

Not the same situation, but I think anyone should agree that there are times when a misguided sense of fairness only distorts news coverage.

Re:Unbelievable

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of the news media were lined up behind Kerry. If one news show gives air time to stories that don't make Kerry look good, can we consider them to simply be bucking the trend? Maybe Fox did want Bush to win, but I don't have a problem with that as long as they ran factual stories.

Compare with Dan Rather, who was willing to run an attack on Bush, right before the election, without checking the facts at all. I'm pissed off about that one: a clear attempt to sway the election using fraud; I want someone to go to jail for that (prolly not Rather because he didn't actually commit fraud; he just deserves ridicule, not jail).

Consider also the "whispering campaign" where they were claiming that Bush had a secret plan to reinstate the draft. As if Congress would have nothing to say about it! This was reported by news media, who then disingenuously said "we weren't reporting that he is going to do it, we were reporting that people are SAYING that he is going to do it". But they quoted these people without quoting anyone with an opposing view, or mentioning the part about Congress having to sign off on any such secret plan before it could become reality.

If we could have perfectly balanced media, I'd love it. Never happen dude. But as long as we have media taking sides, I'm happy to have at least some media on BOTH sides, not all of it on one side.

Re:Unbelievable

[joelt49]

OK, so I grant that maybe it's possible to do that. However, certain challenges remain, such as getting the right voting machine(s). Nevertheless, you'd still have to get way more people involved in the process, and I don't think you're going to keep them all silent. The VB script was, according to my understanding of it, elementary. It's really easy to program that kind of stuff; I want to see something that would work in the real situation, as all the little factors add up, including to code bloat.

As far as media bias goes, I quote myself: "most of the media, except Fox and talk radio, were out to defeat Bush." I hate it when people cite fox news as a source of conservative media bias, when you have NPR, ABC, CBS, etc., out there.

As for your counterexample, take Bush and Kerry's distortions of military service in Vietnam. One got reported as if it were the gospel truth from Day one, the other was ignored until the Kerry campaign issued a press release trying to debunk them, and then Swiftboat Veterans for Truth were always mentioned as a "debunked" organization. Also, the media entirely ignored their complaints about Kerry's post-war testimony (SVT formed, IIRC, in mid-April or earlier), which really hurt a lot of American soldiers still in the country who didn't fake/overexaggerate 3 injuries to get 3 purple hearts to get out of Nam using one of the least known and least used military regulations. Also, I'd like to point out that Bush never "lied" under any fair sense of the word; even Michael Moore admits that he never "lied" in the sense of inentionally deceiving us (George Tenet said it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam had WMD stockpiles). Furthermore, when Kerry bases his claims of being an adequate commander-in-chief off of his war record, and when Kerry's campaign centers off how Bush is a bad commander-in-chief, I think that his exaggeration of his war service is a really relevant issue. Moreso than Bush's Guard Service. Furthermore, one study I saw showed that Bush got record negative coverage from the media, especially in the days leading up to the election, while Kerry got record good coverage. I don't see how that's fair at all.

Also, a random rant: To those who bitch about how we could elect a person who lost all 3 debates, I'll say this. As a republican who voted Bush, I watched the first debate (I had classes/road trips during the other two), and I'll admit that Kerry did the better debating, in the sense that Kerry better defended himself. However, in making that complaint, you want people to listen to what the politicians say without taking into consideration any external factors (without questioning what they said); in essense, you're complaining about people not blindly following what Kerry has to say. Yet, you also seem to complain that most Americans are lemmings who'll listen to the government without questioning it. Think about it.

I'm confused now.

[hummassa]

You mean, if confronted with a patently false statement, he should decline to comment on it because denying it would be the same as confirm it? Whoa.

Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not?

[gtkuhn]

How many people had to look up "disjunctive syllogism" to follow these posts?

Incidentally, it takes the form: A XOR B, not A, therefore B.

Wikipedia sucks, heres another link. http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/inconsistanc y.html

How do you know?

[fmaxwell]

never had my privacy invaded by government or non-government individuals or organizations.

How do you know? Under the PATRIOT Act, warrantless searches can be conducted against you and you might never know it. In fact, the FBI can go to your local library to ask what books you've checked out or for records of what web sites you visited while there -- and the librarians are prohibited from even telling you of the inquiry. How do you know if your phone has been tapped, your Internet connection monitored, or your e-mail traffic examined?

never felt that my rights have been diminshed even in the least possible way, in fact I have more ways to express myself, more ways to share my views and absolutely no hint of having my freedom of speech oppressed or my freedom to life, liberty and property... I have more of each now than 2000.

Yes, your rights have been diminished -- whether you choose to exercise them or not. Show up at George W. Bush's inauguration carrying a sign protesting the war, his handling of the economy, or anything related to his Presidency. You will find yourself cordoned off in a "free speech zone" -- a euphamism for a remote, fenced-in area that's outside of the public's view.

Here's a link to a December 15, 2003 article in "The American Conservative" entitled "Free-Speech Zone": The administration quarantines dissent.. Notice how I chose a conservative publication to prevent you from whining about it being a liberal source.

Re:How do you know?

[sarlen]

How do you know? Under the PATRIOT Act, warrantless searches can be conducted against you and you might never know it. I was under the impression that under the Patriot Act they could delay notification, up to a few months - but eventually you had to be notified if any searches made.

Re:How do you know?

[fmaxwell]

I was under the impression that under the Patriot Act they could delay notification, up to a few months - but eventually you had to be notified if any searches made.

Under Section 213 searches, the government may extend the notification period indefinitely for 'good cause' -- meaning that you may never be notified. Searches made under the PATRIOT Act's Section 218, which amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, have no mandatory disclosure provision at all.

Re:How do you know?

[foniksonik]

I dissent with my wallet and my vote, not with fruitless attention whore tactics for people with nothing better to do. Instead of standing around with signs in hopes of catching some media coverage, why don't these protesters do something productive like lobbying someone with enough money to put an ad on TV or a full page spread in the NY Times.

Protesting is what people did before the age of affordable communication. In today's world you've got a huge selection of methods by which to tell people your opinions. What, do you think you're going to change GWs mind with your signs?

If you must gather together to pat each other on your backs and stroke each others egos while 'demonstrating' something that everyone is and has been aware of most likely for months and months (seriously we know how you feel already and yeah we know there are quite a few of you out there, it's kind of hard to miss)... then pick your own location to have a rally.

All you do when demonstrating at a government event is to cause security concerns to go up all around and increase the chance that someone with criminal intent will take advantage of your cover to do something heinous. Nobody hears your message any better than if you did it somewhere else.

Have a Parade, a Walk Against the War or some other activity with it's own timeline.

Re:How do you know?

[fmaxwell]

I dissent with my wallet and my vote, not with fruitless attention whore tactics for people with nothing better to do.

"Nothing better to do?" You mean like the pro-Bush crowd hooting it up in their cowboy boots at the inauguration? The ones carrying anti-homosexual, anti-choice, religious signs in support of Bush? The ones who don't get penned up somewhere?

You are so un-American that you sicken me. Rather than recognizine the value in free speech, you call those who practice it 'attention whores.'

Instead of standing around with signs in hopes of catching some media coverage, why don't these protesters do something productive like lobbying someone with enough money to put an ad on TV or a full page spread in the NY Times.

Because seeing throngs of people on national news coverage is far more convincing than seeing an ad on TV or in a newspaper. One person with enough money could put an ad on TV. It doesn't mean that his ideas have widespread support.

If you must gather together to pat each other on your backs and stroke each others egos while 'demonstrating' something that everyone is and has been aware of most likely for months and months (seriously we know how you feel already and yeah we know there are quite a few of you out there, it's kind of hard to miss)... then pick your own location to have a rally.

But don't do anything to make President Bush look bad. Don't rain on his parade. Only those who want to throw rose petals at his feet and kiss his ass deserve public attention, right?

All you do when demonstrating at a government event is to cause security concerns to go up all around and increase the chance that someone with criminal intent will take advantage of your cover to do something heinous.

If you are such a fucking coward that you are afraid every time someone protests, then stay at home, pussy. Pro-Bush crowds, yelling, hooting, and hollering are no less cover for those with criminal intent. Hell, look at the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996. It happened in the middle of a loud, but happy, crowd.

Nobody hears your message any better than if you did it somewhere else.

More bullshit. While the networks are covering the inauguration, how will any dissenting voices be heard from some fenced-off pen blocks away?

But your opinion about where others should protest is immaterial. If someone wants to protest at the inauguration, they have the right, as an American, to do so. The federal government has no right to cage up dissenters while allowing those who support the administration to have their voices be heard on public lands. If that's how you think that a country should be run, then move to Communist China. You probably think that Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 was justified because the protestors were voicing dissent with the administration.

Re:How do you know?

[foniksonik]

Nevermind, you've got your head so far up your own ass it's impossible to speak to you. Rant on flamer.

No, I don't respect people who choose to exercise their rights in the most inflammatory, repugnant manner possible. I could exercise my right to do lots of things in stupid disgraceful ways but really it would just be a cry for attention for myself, not for whatever cause I used as an excuse.

Temper tantrums are supposed to be left behind in childhood, adults communicate with each other in civilized discussions.

BTW... why would you cage in your own rally? I was suggesting that you have it at a Marriot or get a permit to hold it in Central Park or Times Square or if in D.C. find a good attractive location in the city somewhere. Tell the media about it and organize it with provisions for everyone involved, public bathrooms, catered food, decorations, traffic control, security... you know like you were throwing a big party.. with the theme being that you are protesting GW's election to the office of President of US.

You want to raise awareness and encourage support? You'll get a lot more people to tune in to your message when you have invited political, social, and other celebrity speakers to talk about your issue. Make it into a benefit while you're at it.

It's not as if you don't know the date of the event and are trying to put together a last minute thing... you've had plenty of time to prepare.

Maybe you just prefer to be seen as an angry mob though?

Re:How do you know?

[fmaxwell]

Nevermind, you've got your head so far up your own ass it's impossible to speak to you. Rant on flamer.

No, I don't respect people who choose to exercise their rights in the most inflammatory, repugnant manner possible.

How ironic those three sentences are when read together.

BTW... why would you cage in your own rally?

I would not. But the Bush administration, in their ongoing attempts to curtail the free speech rights of dissenters would, and do.

I was suggesting that you have it at a Marriot or get a permit to hold it in Central Park or Times Square or if in D.C. find a good attractive location in the city somewhere. Tell the media about it and organize it with provisions for everyone involved, public bathrooms, catered food, decorations, traffic control, security... you know like you were throwing a big party..

I understand your position: Only the wealthy and well-connected should have their voices heard. Anyone who opposes the Bush administration is supposed to be able to spend so much money that they convince the major TV networks and newspapers to give their event major press coverage. Out of work Americans who are unhappy with the Bush administration are supposed to fund $100/head catered affairs for the press?

Meanwhile, Bush's inauguration is funded by tax dollars. So they can fund the inauguration with my tax dollars, but I should not be able to peacefully protest in the public areas where the inauguration is held.

with the theme being that you are protesting GW's election to the office of President of US.

Unlike you, I respect the laws of the U.S., so I am not protesting his election. I'm protesting his administration's policies.

You want to raise awareness and encourage support? You'll get a lot more people to tune in to your message when you have invited political, social, and other celebrity speakers to talk about your issue. Make it into a benefit while you're at it.

We don't just want to raise awareness and encourage support. We want Bush to see, with his own eyes, faces of those Americans who disagree with his policies. We want him to see that a 51%-48% victory in time of war is not a "mandate."

It's funny how you Republicans think that protesting abortion is best done by angry mobs standing in front of clinics intimidating the employees and patients. Yet you feel that public protest, on public lands, at a publically funded inauguration of G.W. Bush should be prevented by any means possible -- even if it involves abridging people's Constitutional rights.

Slashdot Has Jumped The Shark

[Anonymous Coward]

In the election aftermath wherre slashdot's favorite candidate Kerry lost, it seems they'll post any black-helicopter conspiracy theory to make themselves feel better.

It's truly sad how little "news" this site contains anymore. It's just angry, partisan soapboxing now. Really sad what this place has become.

bullshit

[Ender Ryan]

War deaths - deaths in a volunteer military, fighting for our freedom and security.

Bullshit and more bullshit. A handful of voluntary soldiers, over a hundred-thousand conscripts in Iraq, and over 10,000 civilians.

Fighthing for oil, personal vendetta, whatever, it is perfectly clear at this point that it had nothing to do with freedom or security. Bush was aiming to invade Iraq using any excuse at all the first day he stepped into office. He then diverted our military strength away from a place where it was really needed, Afghanistan, if you'll remember, it's really in sad shape right now and could really use our help, and _started_ a major conflict elsewhere.

Re:bullshit

[superpulpsicle]

Of course we are fighting for oil and Bush's personal interest.

You didn't expect Tom Brokaw, Dan Rathers, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfield to all quit for no apparent reason. Forget what the media tell you, this is classic conspiracy 101.

Just wait till the next generation of middle-easterner kids grow up. The U.S will have more enemies than the KKK.

Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not?

[kalidasa]

Five little words: Richard Milhouse Nixon and Watergate. One president was impeached for an illegal coverup of illegal election practices, and he was a Republican.

By the way, do you know what the difference is between your precious George W. and Dick Cheney on the one hand, and Teddy Kennedy vis a vis Mary Jo Kopechne? George W. didn't crash off a bridge when he was arrested for drunk driving (in Kennebunkport, Maine). (Cheney was in his early twenties, so we'll excuse him that bit of stupidity; but W. was 30). By the way, what is this impunity nonsense? Kennedy was CONVICTED, SENTENCED, and served his SENTENCE (it may have been a suspended sentence, but he served it) in the Chappaquidick crash.

Republic had been destroyed

[cgenman]

I'd much rather our Republic has been destroyed through malice and evil than the incompetence of the electorate, which is what evidence currently points to. Evidence of gross violation of the electoral process would restore people's faith in the concept of general election, as the obvious stupidity it has wrought would no longer be the fault of the process, but the fault of manipulations.

Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, hate to nitpick, but Nixon was never impeached. A lot of people think he was, and had he not resigned, he almost definitely would have been.

We've only had two impeachments in our nation's history: Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton.

Here's where they lost me:

[RobertB-DC]

Later on July 1, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Laboratory in Moultrie informed the Valdosta Police that based on the "suicide" details, no autopsy would be performed on Lemme. Unlike Florida, Georgia does not perform mandatory autopsies. A doctor, with 25 years' clinical experience, who was interviewed for this story claimed that the circumstances of Lemme's death appeared to him to be a classic "mob hit."

Once I saw that the article contained the word "suicide" in scare quotes, I realized that further skimming would be utterly useless. Sure, there are bungled investigations, but the rest of the premise seems to be based on some unnamed doctor's memory of a bad mafia movie.

Oh, well, I guess the radical left needs to invent a scandal that can match the stupidity concocted by the radical right.

At least the guy I voted for has never been accused of having anyone axed. But then, you never know what might happ$%## NO CARRIER

This is ridiculous

[Fished]

Read closely the following paragraph:

According to Curtis, Feeney and other top brass at Yang Enterprises, a company located in a three-story building in Oviedo, Florida, wanted the prototype written in Visual Basic 5 (VB.5) in Microsoft Windows and the end-product designed to be portable across different Unix-based vote tabulation systems and to be "undetectable" to voters and election supervisors.

Last time I looked, weren't the much maligned Diebold machines running Windows, as well as all their competititon? And how could such a program be "portable across different Unix-based vote tabulation systems"? You wouldn't need a single program to do this, but many different programs for all the different environments. There's really nothing complicated about figuring out which votes to flip, nor would it be complicated to hide it from non-technical election supervisors. All that would be complicated about such a program would be figuring out how to access the database. The (minimal) technical details described here just don't mirror what would actually be an issue if this were real.

Sorry, folks, but this is a hoax.

America's "moral" "majority"

[Anonymous Coward]

is willing to go to UNETHICAL lengths in order to "win".

It appears the time for the blood of patriots to nourish the tree of liberty may be coming soon.

The wheel of time turns, and the scum rises to the top again.

Time to remove the scum!

Hoping that something isn't so...

[xedd]

Can be very close to keeping one's head buried in the sand. There's often a fine line between hope and denial.

We can hope that something is or isn't. But we should still be willing to face and deal with unpleasantries. Otherwise, those "unpleasantries" can grow into major catastrophies.

Nip a problem in the bud, before it becomes a threat to everything you hold dear.

Re:Hoping that something isn't so...

[jonadab]

> Can be very close to keeping one's head buried in the sand.

If you go RTFA, you won't think so anymore. That article is one of the most
humorously pathetically bad pieces I've read in quite a significant while. It
tries to pass itself off as investigative journalism, but the style is all
totally wrong for that. (The word "alleged" doesn't occur once in the whole
thing, for example, a dead giveaway that it's not the mainstream press article
it wants to be.) The most hilarious thing, though, the thing that had me
rolling on the floor, was when the article stated flatly that VB5 was used
to prototype a program that would run undetectably on unix-based systems.

Re:Hoping that something isn't so...

[gfim]

stated flatly that VB5 was used to prototype a program that would run undetectably on unix-based systems

I thought the same thing at first. But it's not completely unreasonable. The prototype just has to show proof of concept. The real implementation doesn't have to directly use anything from the prototype.

Re:Hoping that something isn't so...

[jonadab]

> But it's not completely unreasonable. The prototype just has to show proof
> of concept. The real implementation doesn't have to directly use anything
> from the prototype.

How on earth do you propose prototyping a proof-of-concept for running
undetectibly on Unix *or* for altering votes on a Unix-based system *or*
for any of the other things this app supposedly did... using VB?

Sure, you could use VB to slap together a movie-style dialog box that says
"How many votes do you want to flip", accepts the third password you type,
then when you hit the go button shows an animation of a skull and crossbones,
makes odd sound effects, and doesn't actually *do* anything... but any
programmer who would call that a prototype or a proof-of-concept wouldn't
have the foggiest notion how to actually write the software in question.

Re:Strange Bedfellows? Or Not?

[kalidasa]

Yes, you're right, not sure why I said something that stupid. He was being investigated for impeachment, but resigned.

Yeah, it DOES look fishy & Bev Harris's critiq

[JimMarch(equalccw)]

I did some googling. This guy Clinton has a serious beef with Yang Enterprises...him and some lady name of Mavis Georgalis.

Some of it does look kinda fishy "in his favor".

Example: the FL dept. of transportation's inspector general's report on the Georgalis case:

http://www.dot.state.fl.us/inspectorgeneral/Report s/AnnualReport2003.pdf

---
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL
ANNUAL REPORT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002-2003
EMPLOYEE MISCONDUCT - REPRESENTATIVE CASE EXAMPLES

Georgalis - This investigation was initiated based on a complaint against Mavis R. Georgalis by Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), a Florida corporation.

YEI provides information technology services and support under an eight-year (January 20, 1999 to January 20, 2007) and approximately eight million dollar contract for the Department, known as the Electronic Document Management System contract.

The investigation established that Georgalis received travel reimbursements from the Department based on false claims for lodging and meals already paid by YEI. It also disclosed Georgalis engaged in a pattern of misconduct, over several years, by accepting gifts and other gratuities from YEI. These gratuities included trips with YEI officials to Biloxi, Mississippi and Las Vegas, Nevada. Georgalis further created a conflict of interest by accepting gifts from another contractor whom she regulated. Lastly, it has been documented that Georgalis used her position and Department resources to seek other employment opportunities.

Summary of Findings/Resulting Actions

Mavis Georgalis resigned her position with the Florida Department of Transportation on April 1, 2002.

On March 6, 2003 Georgalis was charged with receipt of unlawful compensation (Section 838.016 F.S.) Georgalis surrendered to the Columbia County Sheriff's Office on March 12, 2003 and is awaiting a court date.
---

So wait...Yang doesn't like a particular gov't official, so THEY admit to having bribed said official, official gets fired and charged (based on paperwork Yang submits?) and nothing happens to Yang which has connections to Jeb Bush and an FL congressman?

OK, that's...kinda funky. Doesn't mean Clinton isn't full of it of course.

If there is ANYTHING to this story, it looks like this guy Clinton got royally pissed at Yang, enough so to blow the secrecy off a Qui Tam action? Or did the secrecy period on the Qui Tam action already expire? "Qui Tam" whistleblower suits start out "in secret"...I oughta know, Bev and I filed one on Diebold back in Nov. of '03, secrecy wasn't lifted until just a couple months ago.

Damned if I know what's up here. I'm going to wait for more data.

Bev Harris is even more skeptical and has published this:

~~~

Why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation

ABOUT DISINFORMATION: Like a good lie, it has elements of truth. Trouble is, the truth doesn't relate to the nuts and bolts of the story. For example in the Tom Feeney vote-manipulation story, people are documenting relationships between Tom Feeney and Yang, and between the writer of the story and other scandals, but so far the evidence presented does not back up the vote manipulation story itself.

DISINFORMATION IS DANGEROUS TO THE CLEAN VOTING MOVEMENT: Black Box Voting is finding real evidence consistent with fraud. We are even finding, in one of our investigations, evidence consistent with a systemic, or widespread breakdown in security, possibly exploited. Getting the facts is tedious, unexciting work, consisting of auditing and personal interviews, and it takes time. Many Americans want a magic bullet, a single shot that will blow the lid off everything at once.

That's risky. If the mainstream media continues to be bombarded with stories that sound credible, but aren't, when the real thing comes down the pike it will be ignored.

Whil

Basic fact checking, thanks to the Internet

[mike_lynn]

Well, reading through his deposition, he mentions on item 12 a full name: Raymond Lemme. He calls Raymond the Inspector General of the Florida Department of Transportation.

According to the FDOT website (http://www.dot.state.fl.us/inspectorgeneral/) and archive.org, Cecil T. Bragg, Jr., CPA has been the IG since at least 2001 up until the present.

The only place that I could see Lemme's name mentioned anywhere was in http://www.dot.state.fl.us/businessmodel/pdf/Augus t%202003.pdf, where he was mentioned as part of the fraud investigation squad.

Wayne Leaders, mentioned as an investigator for NASA, shows up as a 'Special Agent' in Jan 2003 in www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html, complete with a phone number you can reach him at (poor guy).

More details here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030831121943/h ttp://w ww.n-jcenter.com/special/feeney.htm

Which eventually leads to the real story:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021030045304/ www.n-jc enter.com/2002/Jun/9/STAT001.htm

Curtis is one fcked up little dude.

Wormhole Xtreme, Aurora, & plausible deniabilt

[leftie]

One of the most interesting quotes in SF history came out of what was otherwise one of the goofiest episodes of the Stargate franchise.

In the set up for this episode, the character Gen. Hammond said the Air Force allowed the show Wormhole Xtreme, an obvious TV show knockoff of the Stargate program, because if the Stargate program was ever discovered, the fake Wormhole Xtreme TV show could be used as a vehicle for plausible deniabilty to discount real evidence of the "real" Air Force Stargate program.

In other words, if you want to protect a secret program, create an incredible lie that is easily disproven that is fairly close to the actual truth.

Does the Air Force use such techniques? About 10 years ago, Testors Models got the specs leaked to it about a top secret Air Force scramjet spy plane program called Project Aurora. Since then, every time there was a strange sighting of high speed aircraft, that Testors Model mess got brought up... until a couple of weeks ago, anyway. A couple of weeks ago the Air Force said released informantion that a scramjet hit Mach 10 and set the world air speed record. That's pretty similar to the 10 year time frame that the SR-71 was actually in service as a spy plane, and when the Air Force started releasing data to the public about the plane.

Definitely a troll article?

[MarkusQ]

Somebody wants to take the attention off the simple trick that actually was used to rig the election:

Don't send enough poll booths/voting machines to the Democratic precincts.

It's cheap, it's easy, and it really really works. You can set an upper limit on the number of people who get to vote for your opponent in his strongholds, and...ta da!

And if any one notices, flood the media with stories about Black Helicopter style conspiracy theories.

--MarkusQ

Europeans never cease to suprise me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans never cease to surprise me

And non-Americans who have an anti-American agenda never cease to suprise me. Just because one spineless hippie wouldn't fight doesn't mean other Americans wouldn't. Hell, even if my guy WON because of a rigged election I would fight it. But I guess it is ok for you to judge a group of people by one person, as long as it fits into your ideology? Right?

Great source!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, that source isn't biased at all! A suggestion, why doesn't Slashdot run stories from both sides of the fence if it's going to run stories from shitty blogs that have less journalistic ethics than the national enquirer. You would be better off running opinion columns from the left and the right than this tripe.

Re:Great source!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because then it wouldn't fit the slashbot bias and agenda.

Red herring

[MarkusQ]

It's a red herring.

The real trick was much simpler: they didn't send enough voting machines or polling booths to predominantly Democratic precincts. Bingo--the number of votes for the opposition is limited to something you can beat.

--MarkusQ

US 2004 exit polls only on the same sites, too

[leftie]

Let's all conveniently forget that exit polls that vary from the actual election returns are used as damning proof of election fraud in every single nation on the face of the Earth but the United States, and that the US Government just used the exit polling data to demand the "official" election returns in Ukraine be overturned.

All this in a country that has been proven to have gone to war for a lie, a threat of weapons of mass distruction that did not exist.

Translation: The new test of whether evidence is reliable is whether it benefits the neo-cons or not. Anything good for neo-cons is "true", anything that challenges neo-cons if "false".

Like "urban legends" about Ukranian voter fraud?

[leftie]

What you call "urban legends" of US voter fraud is backed by the exact same standard as the charges of voter fraud made by the Bush State Department in Ukraine.

That standard is exit polling data. Kerry beat Bush by 5 points in the 2004 US election exit polls.

Sounds just like "CIA says No Iraqi WoMD" articles

[leftie]

There is no difference between the tone of this article and the tone of the articles in which intelligence insiders said there was no threat from Iraqi WoMDs. Those intelligence insiders were absolutely correct. There were no Iraqi WoMD.

No, you're just in denial

[leftie]

Bush was 5 points down in the exit polls election night. We wake up the next morning, and Bush has supposedly won, all the exit polls are 5 points off, all the exit poll error coincidentally go against Kerry, the variances happen to be in different states where electronic voting machines just happen to also be?

Exit poll varience from official election returns is considered proof positive of voter fraud in every single country but the US. Bush even demanded the Ukranian elections be overturned becasue the exit polls varied from official returns.

Wake up. You're living in denial.

It's enough to start a Grand Jury investigation

[leftie]

One first hand witness account is enough to show cause to start an official investigation and put this in fromt of a Grand Jury.

Stating that there is enough evidence to start an official investigation is far different than stating that a charge is "proven." The standard has been met to start asking questions officially, and the official investigation need to begin.

Kerry led the exit polls by 5 full points

[leftie]

This claim that there is no evidence there was no fraud is false. The same exit polling that was allowed to be used to prove fraud in the Ukraine election proves fraud in the US elections.

Kerry led in the US exit polls by 5 full points, and the exit polls were surprisingly accurate in non-electronic voting states. In the black box states, every single state exit poll had huge variances, and every single incident of variances benefitted Bush and hurt Kerry.

Do you know what the odds are of Bush benefitting by evey single huge variance being a coincidence? Millions to billion to one odds, depending on the study you read.

This is the second straight national election Bush has pulled million to billion to one "coincidences" to become President.... which make the odds of Bush legitimately winning both elections in the area of a quadrillion to 1 against Bush.

Our cable systems already run FOX News.

[leftie]

We get all the "stories from shitty conservative blogs that have less journalistic ethics than the National Enquirer." We all get FOX News Channel on our cable system.

Proof, or disproof will come. Patience, folks.

[skids]

Curtis will be interviewed and information about what he says in front of the House Judicial Committee will be blogged at:

http://www.truthout.org/cblog.shtml

MOD PARENT DOWN!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a commie who wants to suppress anyone who does not agree with Bush's administration. You were happy to see protestors at functions where Clinton appeared, weren't you hypocrite!?!? You would have had a shit fit if your right wing ass-buddies had been fenced off blocks away from official events when they wanted to protest. You would have liked Stalin. He thought the same way that you do - silence dissenters at all costs.

And THEY have all the guns!

[alizard]

So go buy one and learn how to use it. So much the better if you're in one of the states where the Federal "assault rifle" ban expired.

What a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

In the article it said that they specifically wanted this program to be built with visual basic and work for both windows and linux. What a joke, when has anyone ever made a cross platform program with visual basic. This just shows how bogus this story is.