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Programmer Built Vote-Rigging Demo for Florida Politician
Syre writes "therawstory reports that a programmer named Clinton Curtis says in a sworn affidavit (mirror) that he developed prototype vote-rigging software at the request of then-Florida state representative Tom Feeney. The affidavit has been turned over to the House Judiciary Committee, of which Feeney is now a member. Should we call for inspection and disassembly of all the voting machine code to see if it contains any of these secret vote tampering functions he was asked to include in his prototype?" A follow-up interview is available. A point to emphasize: he's not making any claims of actual fraud occurring in the Florida elections.
Goverments have been overthrown for less than this.
-Dipster
Voting fraud... If Florida??!! What is this world coming to?
... when I simply say: Bastards!!!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Mirror
Carousel is a lie!
...as programming the american public to be a bunch of scared sheep to vote for you.
Something about this story bothers me. If Curtis has been involved in a long running dispute with Feeney ranging back to 2002, why would Feeney have anything to do with him? I mean, this would not be the first example of foolishness in politics, but it would certainly be the dumbest.
Perhaps Feeney was trying to set Curtis up?
M
Is it just me, or is this exactly the same story as the one DIRECTLY BELOW IT?
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
Presto, the Republican wins!
sulli
RTFJ.
They can be hacked. News at 11. Maybe we should have another election. We can all put a red marble in a jar for GW and a blue marble for JK. The perfect infallable voting system.
As to the question, disassembling the code to make sure can't hurt anyone and would avoid lots of rumor mongering and conspiricy theories.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
Unless you were worried about an outcome of an election. This should be investigated. Diebold promised Ohio to Bush. He must have great foresite on voting patterns. I know the thread talks about florida, but ohio is related.
Jeoin
This isn't just a dupe of a previous story... it's not just a dupe of the top story... it's a dup of an incredibly outrageous story that makes the radical right's Clinton Suicide scandals look almost sane.
My opinion, for what it's worth, is that the right-wingers are astroturfing the 'net with outrageous vote-rigging stories. This helps ensure that the real story of the Green/Libertarian recount in Ohio won't be taken seriously. Karl Rove is probably laughing his butt off.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
this is hardly journalism. www.therawstory.com is obviously a left wing biased publication and I would not trust it further than I would Rush Limbaugh's website. However, there needs to be a full investigation. I would like to see a little more than one person's testimony befor curcifying this guy. If the request for developing this software took place in a meeting, who else was there and what do they have to say about this?
story
interview
blog
Let's see ... 400+ posts about vote fixing without supporting facts, most of those will be flames, but at least Slashdot will make advertising revenue, right?
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
The trouble with blogs, is that no-one writing them has the time to follow up these stories. If a mainstream journalist breaks them there's a chance (albeit not much of one in the present climate) that they'll keep digging away, and uncover a Watergate-style conspiracy (which isn't to say that this is necessarily one of those).
But if Woodward and Bernstein were bloggers, they'd've been happy to publish the skimpy information that started their investigation -- smug that they put one over on the press -- and let the whole thing degenerate into a partisan "Nixon Sucks!" style-flamewar.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
jeb jeb hes our man, if he cant do it, noone can!
This is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Who is Clint Curtis? What is his background? Criminal history? Most importantly, what evidence does he bring to the table? Is it his word against someone else's?
Can he produce call logs? Appointment books? Witnesses? Tapes or memos? Can he demonstrate an extraordinary knowledge of voting systems in the state of Florida?
There is a troubling taint of money on this: a "$200,000 award being offered by the nonprofit group Justice through Music for proof of voting fraud..." He is claiming he doesn't want the reward; money may have nothing to do with it. But we may have a grifter going after a score, directly or indirectly, by telling people what they want to hear. I am not saying either one: we simply don't know until more facts come out.
I fully believe we have arrived at a stage in american politics where a politician (yes, sure, a Republican politician) would tamper with an election. There is already plenty of documented funny business. I'm speaking of the felon purging in FL, stop-and-search roadblocks in OH, for instance.
Let's not forget the real moral of this story, illustrated by one thing Clint says certainly rings true regardless of the rest of his claims:
"I can't believe the Democrats were stupid enough to allow [this]," he says. "I can't imagine anyone going to a bank and not getting a receipt. But yet we have our voting machines that way. It strikes me as really odd that machines like that could even exist."
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
Knowing that the editors don't always read the previous day's stories before posting new ones makes me feel better when I miss a few stories.
But not from the Firefox users!
for his demo:
// do nothing
if (votecount % 3) {
countvote();
}
else {
}
AWESOME! Indict me!
red-blue color blind, you insensitive clod.
I guess this story was so good that it had to be posted twice within 24 hours.
This turns out true... $50,000 in legal expenses.
America losing all faith in it's electoral processs... Civil War
John Titor being right... Priceless For all your time-travel needs, theres cash, for everything else, there's mastercard.
In Soviet russia, only old Koreans profit from pictures of Natalie Portman stored on Beowulf Clusters.
See comments from Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting on this here:d sen/120604madsen.html
http://blackboxvoting.org/#feeny
and why this may be disinformation here:
http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120604Ma
Google is your friend. This guy has been accusing the same people (Feeney, etc.) of everything from overbilling the Florida Department of Transportation to spying for the Chinese for years now.
The real story is the uneven distribution of resources (e.g. voting booths & machines) to precincts based on their voting history. Traditionally Democratic precincts had their vote capped by doing this, preventing large numbers of people from voting, and the trick probably swung the presidential election. As that fact began to come out, sudenly there is an enourmous movement pushing the Black Helicopter theories.
Go figure.
--MarkusQ
(Score:5, Scary)
This
Blackboxvoting.org has a story regarding why this story sounds like disinformation.
And did he do this before, or after, he typed up the Bush National Guard memos?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Subpoena a dozen random machines of the type implicated. Have the guy run through the magic sequence on invisible buttons. If the screens appear as he indicates, then vote fixing may have occurred. Otherwise, where's the crime?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
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.
While MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and I had a run-in last week, I agree absolutely with Olbermann's earlier critique of the Madsen homeland security story, and this new Madsen story is just as weak. Most of both Madsen stories are bait and switch.
While real journalists "write tight" and include only the information directly relevant to the topic, Madsen wanders all over the place, recapping unrelated information from real news agencies, piggybacking onto their credibility, with only the most tenuous ties to what he is actually trying to prove. Analyze the meat of the story, taking out all the loose references to other stories, and Madsen's work gets very weak indeed.
Here are questions raised by the Feeney vote-manipulation story:
1. One of the most significant problems is that, while Clint Curtis describes a technique of writing a program, he never mentions HOW he supposedly got this program into the voting machines.
2. A second significant problem is that several of the Florida counties used different software in 2000 than they do now, and that various Florida counties use different manufacturers and different systems. Writing one program that would tamper with ES&S punch cards and Diebold optical scans at the same time is somewhat unrealistic. The questions this raises are these:
a. Which specific counties was this software supposedly used in for 2000, 2002 and 2004? Actually, from reading both the affidavit and the Madsen article, there is no evidence it was used anywhere.
- Madsen does a bait and switch when he discusses Volusia County. He starts by saying it is Feeney's district, and then actually goes on to report a story broken by Black Box Voting in October, 2003, about minus 16,022 votes for Bush in Volusia -- which appears to have nothing to do with the Feeney story. What systems was his vote rigging program for? Which manufacturers?
3. The techniques used to program a vote-rigging system in the Madsen article don't actually match the techniques in the affidavit by Clint Curtis, and neither one makes much sense. It's a simple matter to re-map a touch-screen to flip votes, and you don't need a special program for it. Simply switch the candidate ID numbers and it's done.
4. Most political shenanigans are not conducted by the candidate himself, but by operatives. It is certainly possible for a politician to hold several meetings in which he commits a felony in front of several witnesses, but that's not usually how it is done. A more common technique is an envelope full of cash left in a drawer of an operative, with at least one, sometimes more, buffer layers between the operative and the politician.
Clint Curtis says Feeney himself had meeting after meeting to directly discuss election rigging software. Could happen, certainly, but this seems unusual.
5. There are some statements that don't hang together from
Hey, it could happen.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Legitimate things like this go on all the time. It is commonly referred to as "white hat" hacking, as we all know. That may not be the case here, but it sounds more to me like the programmer is disappointed with election results and wants to pretend he's a whistleblower.
That's all that comes up in Google. Can anyone find out more? A "suicide" of an inspector general staff member of anything is inherently suspicious.
Do they mean this fella?
I saw this link a few days ago. Unfortunately he removed much of his more hilarious tin-foil hat content. The guy would actually do screen prints of sorta-related newspaper stories, then black out the names to make it look scandalous.
His demonstration program is underwhelming. You could make the same kind of thing to show any program could be trojaned.
Don't get me wrong, the e-voting situation is crazy and needs substantial reform, examination, and a general fixin'. But this guy is just another conspiracy guy trying to sell a book.
Stuff like this does NOT help address the real problems in e-voting.
Wheres the evidence? Sure this makes for a good story, but without proper evidence all it is to me is an attempt at a scandal.
Beat the computer, program your life.
That would explain why there were no votes for Kodos...
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
After the *2000* election (on July 4th, ironically enough) I was talking with someone who's pretty thoroughly involved with the voting process here in Florida.
Though s/he didn't (couldn't?) make any direct accusations or claims, s/he kept referencing the movie "Gangs of New York."
Yes, I know, third-hand apocryphal information. To be taken with as many salt-grains as necesssary.
Even though I fully believe that the Republicans have engaged in vote fraud and vote rigging in this last election and the 2000 election please look at this VERY carefully before jumping on the bandwagon. This report is oh so very convenient and looks suspiciously like the setup Dan Rather walked into a while back regarding Bush's military record. The Republicans are playing very dirty these days and this has a bit of a "smell" to it. There are plenty of other real examples out there already of vote tampering the most obvious being the voting machines with NO audit trail using CLOSED SOURCE software that we CAN'T look at because of IP and trade secret laws and central tabulators created by Bush supporting companies.
This could be some bizarre case where the Representative was trying to persuade people he knew that electronic voting wasn't to be trust and could be rigged. So he got a vote rigging device installed on a voting machine and showed it off to his buddies and they all immediately knew that electronic voting would be a bad thing if vote rigging software could so easily be tossed in. Electronic voting nevertheless was rolled out thanks to the millions of dollars already invested in it so they decided that rather than raise public fears and insecurities they'd sit on the knowledge and wait it out.
I still don't see how this guys software could have been anything but prototype. Did he get a copy of the voting software used in the Florida machines? Were they left unguarded so that someone could have slipped this sort of thing in?
Direct away from face when opening.
For those of you who haven't seen the previous story on /., here's my reaction to this story.
Just wanted to clarify in case you meant Ohio may have had its electronic voting stations tampered with.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Support the bills already in the House and Senate that will fix this, instead of fantasizing about how the 2004 election was "stolen" (it wasn't).
A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.
After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):
To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections...
The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.
A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".
Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
Disclaimer: this comes from a previous post of mine on the subject
Seems that the US is no better than all those Banana Republicans, sorry, I mean Banana Republics that our "liberal" media loves to trash and our beloved Emperor, er, pResident loves to bring "democracy" to ... :-(
Folks, we need paper ballots. Counting them by bubblesheet scanner may be acceptable, but we need that paper trail.
If there was fraud in Florida, that's our opportunity to spread the word: that kind of fraud could be prevented by paper ballots.
Paper ballots are cheaper and more reliable than electronic machines, but the huge savings in money is nothing compared to the transparency, the paper trail and the difficulty in committing fraud that only paper ballots can deliver.
See what I've been reading.
Oh wait, this is America. Just go about your business, turn on Fox...nothing to see here. Everything is fine. Nascar anyone? @-)
Currently bidding on sig
Contra is a highly fair game. I've started with 3 lives, and won. In fact I earn lives. I played through the game about 13 times in a row, and at the end of it, I think I had over 30 lives.
Theres a lot of games out there that aren't fair, but Contra is definately playable.
God spoke to me.
You appear to work at www.trellon.com, which provides software/server solutions to political campaigns.
Maybe you have some source of information that you'd like to share, or you'd like to explain what you do at Trellon?
Amen. I can think of a thousand legitimate reasons why someone would want a PoC and demo of such software.
The re-election of GB is probably the worst thing to happen to this country since World War II, but it did happen I believe.
adam b.
Thanks for sticking it to those scaremongering liberals.
Most of slashdot articles, before slashdot...
Nicely written up here.
Like all good conspiracy stories it will be almost impossible to prove. It's the magic bullet all over again. I expect this to become American lore just like JFK's assassination conspiracies.
It is astounding to me that this country always manages to produce stuff like this. In my unscientific way it only leaves me to conclude that America is nuts - one way or another.
All voting systems should be GPLed so we can download the source, and instpect it.
There are 10 types of people in the world... those that understand binary and those that don't.
All this noise about voting machines is just a distraction from the real political issues we need to deal with, such as economics issues like progressive taxation, and how and why we should re-enact progressive taxation to pay for universal healthcare and longterm unemployment for all Americans; and how and why we should bring back advanced manufacturing and programming from offshore.
But the rich and semi-rich media figures like Rather, Jennings, Lehrer, Limbaugh, Franken, OReilly, newspaper reporters and editors et al, like their low taxes, and they don't have to worry about whether their children will get sick or die without medical care, or have to live in a car.
THat is why all we get is distrations like this, and political gossip and political personality cults.
Never mind the voting machine crap, fellow liberals, progressives, and leftists. This is an information war, a war of perceptions. Best focus in on the economic issues I outlined above, ones that can speak to all working Americans.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
You'd think he could produce a copy of the software he wrote...
I think I remember an episode of MacGyver where he overthrew a violent dictator with a rubber band, 2 bottle caps, and some navel lint.
Beat that.
If it was rigged and you called for an "inspection and disassembly of all the voting machine code" as suggested do you think the code you or 'the authorities' recieved would actually be the dodgy version? All traces of the modified code would have probably been destroyed by now.
Personally I think the difference between exit poll results and the 'official tally' speak far more clearly about the honesty of the election. check out The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy (PDF)
(I thought the quote from Republican Dick Morris on Fox news that starts "Exit polls are almost never wrong" was quite ironic)
Why does this not come as a suprise to any of us.
Because if something is possible, someone, somewhere will try to do it, regardless of how reprehensible their motives are.
Why Florida? Florida might want to think about changing its state motto to "The Shame State".
Its very simple, this is a call to make electronic voting open source. Thats all there is to it. The source should be inspected before being compiled by as many independent sources as possible. Now if this story is true, then the 200 election was a fraud, whos to say the system hasnt been extended to this election into even more states with shady republican governors? In Ukraine when this kind of thing happens the people show up in force to get new elections to occur. Here? They accept the corruption and move on. America doesnt seem to be cut out for democracy...
...and it should be known by now
This looks for all the world like a setup, and a very efficient one at that. Once this is discredited, much of the "rigged election" talk will be smeared with it.
Good for you. Now say that in a sworn affidavit and have verifiable links to the people and organizations that you claim to have been in contact with and it might be news.
Claiming that you rigged an election is not news.
Working for a candidate and then claiming in sworn testimony that you did some work which may be linked to rigged elections: that's news.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
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.
s t%202003.pdf, where he was mentioned as part of the fraud investigation squad.
h ttp://w ww.n-jcenter.com/special/feeney.htm
/ www.n-jc enter.com/2002/Jun/9/STAT001.htm
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/Augu
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/
Which eventually leads to the *real* story:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021030045304
Curtis is one fcked up little dude.
This last election has completed my transformation to numbness. We masses exist only to have our opinion manipulated. I believe that most people want to be liked, but politicians who shove it in everybody's faces is interested not in the job but in the popularity contest (a "mandate" ... riiiight). Shame on Bush for playing the god card. Shame on the people who fell for it.
I read this story here and my brother (somewhat computer illiterate) begged me to submit it but I thought against it because of all of the political overtones. For those that are interested in more details, including some possible conspiracy theories, you should read it. It discusses where the financing came from and links it directly back to the Bush family. It further alledges that President Bush's money trail has been exposed by the CIA in retaliation for his recent house cleaning there. It also mentions several elections that were adjusted during the testing phase of the illicit program.
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
This was suppossedly taking place in the year 2000 before electronic voting took place in Florida.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
if true, it would be nice to see M. Electric Chair being given a taste of his own...
Say for trahison against the state....
I agree. This type of scare mongering is, in my opinion, very dangerous to our society. The Berkeley study got a lot of hype (not enough for most liberals), yet their study has been thoroughly DEBUNKED.
Here's a choice quote from one of the debunking statisticians: "If I were to get this article as (an academic) reviewer, I would turn it around and say they were fishing to find a result," Stewart said. "I know of no theory or no prior set of intuitions that would have led me to run the analysis they ran."
Talk about timely, the Economist magazine is this week running an article about the extreme liberal bias of American academia, and the hypocrisy of it. (think: we love diversity, so long as you are a liberal). I say ENOUGH of the rabble rousing crap. I've had enough of the academic liberal elites using their credentials to foist lies on the American people.
I agree we should always try to find flaws in any voter-related processes (electronic or otherwise). But spreading lies to undermine an election is tantamount to treason, in my book.
A voting machine GUI program is useless without being ported to some hardware. This was just a prototype, which would probably have to be thrown away when it didn't match a machine's driver API.
At any rate, the work to glue a prototype onto a real machine is probably O(creating a new GUI).
While it's sleazy for a politician to be involved in this kind of thing, and I hope he gets voted out of office if it's all true, I don't see any broken laws here. Show me his program on a production voting machine, and I'll be convinced.
What if this was just for a mock-election, like for trade shows and political rallies? You put a PC on the counter and let people vote, only no matter who wanders by to 'vote', your guys win. The thing could be a harmless toy.
sigs, as if you care.
He also had a hand in writing Slashcode, and he added a sneaky piece of code that makes some stories appear twice.
Like this one, for example.
I've been very intrigued at how the once accurate (within 2% accuracy to the actual voting numbers) exit poll data that has been used since 1965, the same methods being used across europe as well suddenly is to blame for the descrepancies in 2000, 2002 primaries and 2004 where opti-scan and other black box voting has occured.
Dr.Stephen Freeman of U of Penn, made a statisical analysis of the unweighted exit poll data of the 2004 election and came to the conclusion that the odds that the exit poll data could be that wrong in only 3 combined swing states together (Florida and Ohio included) was conservatively at 622,000 to 1. I have read a critique of his use of data, but essentially there was something majorly significant with the way the exit poll data differed.
Then of course you consider how the companies who create the machines are
1. major Bush backers, 2.Fought against paper audits of their machines. 3. Fought against the code being open to public scrutiny, 4. The software testing is done out of public eye, by a private company closely attached to the voting machine creators. 5. In 2002 Rep. Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska ran the first "field test" of the vote couting software, running for senate while still CEO of ES&S (basically a sistercompany as Diebold, same software, machinesetc..). His company counted the votes and his victory, in a predominantly black and Democratic district which had not
voted Republican in a hundred years, and involving a multi-point swing from pre-election polls, was considered by the press "an amazing upset."
A very good summary of the facts...
http://www.bartcop.com/110904votes.htm/
You dont have to be a liberal or conspiracy theorist to be more than majorly alarmed at this.
Im surprised more americans are'nt up in arms.
I dont necessarily believe that just voting machines harmed the election, jeez, just look at the legal mess in Ohio right now in general...Hmmn maybe thats why Bush's ohio vote was ratified today, 6 days early:
"Judiciary Committee Demands Explanation of Irregularities in Ohio
Election Law Reform In a fifteen page letter to Ohio SoS Kenneth Blackwell, The House Judiciary Committee has asked for explanation of widespread voting irregularities in Ohio. These include:
1) Warren County lockdown - The admin building where votes were counted was locked down on election night and the public and the press excluded from the process. County officials claimed this was done in response to a terrorist warning that neither the FBI , nor Blackwell's office knew of,.
2) Perry County counting discrepencies - Poll books examined after the election show more votes cast than actual voters voting. Computer errors were blamed for other problems where votes were counted twice.
3) Perry County registration peculiarities- Very high percentage of registered voters in the county (91%) many registered in the same year and lacking signatures on file.
4) Unusual results in Butler County - A Supreme Court candidate for office received 5,000 votes more than did the Kerry ticket, whereas the Bush ticket got 40,000 more votes than the Republican judicials candidate.
5) Unusual results in Cuyahoga County - Unusually high votes for third party candidates (in one instance, 215 votes for one candidate versus 8 votes for all third-party candidates combined in 2000).
6) Spoiled Ballots - Undervotes for president in one county were as high as 25% (6,000 votes!), with a total of 93,000 for the state.
7) Franklin County overvote - 4,258 votes counted for a precinct with only 800 registerd voters.
8) Miami County vote discrepency - 19,000 votes were added to election totals that had been missed, all for Bush.
9) Mahoning County machine problems - Numerous voters reported problems with not being able to select Kerry on voting machines which defaulted to Bush.
10) Machine shortages - In Franklin County long lines were
Sounds to mee like perfectly legit, btw. Building a demo how to fake votes is nothing more than programming something like an intrusion-tool. Both can be misused, but both can be used to make something more secure.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
I've already ranted on this shitty story:
1 90 9&cid=11014994
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13
In a nutshell, I spent about an hour going through goolge links of a few of the people involved in this story (either posting it or writing it or making it up) the URLs are in my original post. Anyway, they all have long histories of being politically biased, and spewing liberal FUD.
some points to consider:
- Would a undetecable application that is mneant to be cross platform be written in VB?
- why would a journalist, that is former NSA, and supposedly has all these tech credentials use an AOL addres? Fine it may work, and he might like it, but an AOL email address takes away a lot of credibility IMHO. (see original reply).
- If this had any validity, why was it not brought up sooner? There were articles on it back in 2002. It seems like the main stream Dems would have been all over this two or three years ago, if they thought there was any truth to it.
What I find disturbing is that slashdot would run this story twice. Clearly every article and source is biased, a quick google search quickly verifies that fact.
So what we get here is supermarket fluff and liberal FUD. We won't tolerate MS FUD, but leftwing FUD must be soooo MmmMmm Good that we get a double dose!
This is a completely hypothetical question. I have seen no evidence of concerted voter fraud and have no reason to believe that the results of the 2004 presidential election were illegitimate. Instead, I'm wondering if some of the experts on the Constitution and the law could shed some light on what would happen in the (again, hypothetical) case where election fraud was proven, and in particular, if it was fraud that demonstrably changed the outcome of the election.
Would we have new elections? Would the election be awarded to the opposing candidate? Would the sitting president be obligated to step down? If so, who would serve in his place? Would it make any difference if this was discovered before or after the oath of office was administered? I would imagine that "turmoil" would be an understatement.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
From archive.org, we have the original story. It looks like the voting machine part was added to bring this back into the newspapers. This wouldn't be hard, considering his original job was programming for the FDOT ... *and* Yang, his *prior* employer.
Thank you, archive.org:
Sunday, June 09, 2002
---
Feeney's role in FDOT contract dispute questioned
By LAURA ZUCKERMAN (laura.zuckerman@news-jrnl.com)
Staff Writer
TALLAHASSEE -- Clint Curtis thought he was doing the state a favor last May when he alerted investigators at the Florida Department of Transportation about what he claimed was fraudulent billing by an Oviedo computer firm represented by House Speaker Tom Feeney.
Today, Curtis is still adding up the personal and professional costs for doing what he calls "the right thing" and what Florida law requires of anyone who suspects mismanagement or the waste of public funds.
"I can't believe this is how it's supposed to work," says the veteran computer programmer who worked as a technology consultant for FDOT. "I thought I was doing my duty; now I wonder if I was just stupid."
Last May, Curtis "blew the whistle" on what he believed were violations of state law by Yang Enterprises of Oviedo in an $8 million technology contract with FDOT. Curtis worked for Yang prior to being hired by FDOT, and based some of his allegations on his involvement with the state contract while at Yang.
In the filing with FDOT's inspector general, who is charged with investigating suspected misdeeds, Curtis said Yang engaged "in a practice of false billing" and employed an illegal alien, a violation of state law and cause for the immediate cancellation of the contract.
More than a year after they were lodged, the allegations only now are being fully investigated by FDOT. The delay stems in part from the fact that FDOT shifted the focus of its investigation from Yang to Curtis and the FDOT manager who approved his hiring, Mavis Georgalis.
Curtis says the shift was prompted by Yang and its allies, including Feeney, to quiet Yang's critics.
Yang's attorneys say that's not true. They deny any instances of overbilling and say the character and conduct of Curtis and Georgalis are suspect.
The charges and countercharges have touched off a series of events and repercussions that are still being felt.
The tale stretches from Seminole County to the state capital, encompassing everything from lawsuits over intellectual property to claims of influence peddling by Feeney and culminating in the firing of Curtis and the resignation of Georgalis, who was in charge of the Yang contract.
It is the kind of drama best viewed through the high-powered lens of politics, for on its fringes stands Feeney, one of the state's most well-connected players, and at its center are questions raised by Yang and its defenders about the motives of Curtis and Georgalis.
The story is laced with conspiracy theories and conflicting commentaries, much of which is spelled out in court documents and other public records examined by The News-Journal during the course of a weeks-long investigation.
ALLEGATIONS ALL AROUND
Curtis says he now believes Feeney used his position as House speaker to stifle any investigation of Yang by FDOT, which, if true, would be a violation of state ethics laws.
But Feeney, an attorney whose clients include Yang Enterprises, denies he used his influence to benefit Yang and says he played no role when the firm secured an eight-year contract with FDOT in 1999 -- with a price tag not to exceed $8 million -- to provide a computer program to manage large volumes of information.
The relationship between Feeney and Yang predates the Oviedo Republican's rise to power two years ago as House speaker, with its origins traced as far back as the 1980s, when Tyng-Lin Yang, the company's co-owner, wor
I take sworn affidavits pretty seriously. He's willing to swear that Mr. Feeney's office was looking into the software so that they could steer the Florida vote. If he's found to be lying (and I'm sure that forces will be marshalled to de-legitimize him), there are pretty severe penalties for filing false affidavits. The man has a lot at risk by filing this affidavit, and I'm sure he's aware that his whole life can be ruined as a result of this.
When I put on my tinfoil hat, I can see him being added to no fly lists and having his credit reports besmirched by "identity fraud". Thank goodness I only use the hat for creative purposes.
The vote there in Flo-riddah was VERY close in 2000, and I believe that it went in 2004 in exactly the 49/51 way he describes. Furthermore, Ohio went in the same proportion, too, as I recall. (corrections?)
It makes me very suspicious of close races, more than anything, and also makes me want a voter-verifiable paper trail to be created. I'd go even further to say that I'd want the actual vote count to be run off of the paper trail. (Just show the paper record to the voter and ask the voter if it matches with their computer selections.) A computerized system can be a big step forward in terms of making the act of voting easier, but the lack of verifiability gives me the willies.
I heard a number of right-wing pundits saying that this past election was the start of a 30-year dominance by the Republicans, and while I hope that isn't the case, I also hope that computerized touch-screen voting can be made as verifiable as paper ballots.
Why is it that we can't use paper ballots anyway?
*sigh*
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
The machine should produced a marked card (Scantron-like) that is the same one used by non-machine voters (in many districts). If voters want to check the card after machine-use they can. And, have a reader machine to verify cards, both machine- and manually-marked ones, to reduce grey areas.
The voting machine can still store the result for quick tabulation, but the card becomes the final word in cases of dispute.
Table-ized A.I.
It's not like the machines hadn't been known to be able to rig voting.
They showed how to do it on The Screen Savers several months back, where by pressing a specific sequence allowed the user to get into the developers screen. The person then could rig the machine to change the choice of the voter w/o the voter even knowing about it.
Again, this concerns were voiced weeks before the election, when the President of the company who makes the machines put his support behind Bush.
The problem is it would be hard to verify that systems were recording the accurate votes. Though, voter fraud is not just limited to voting machines, as ballot stuffing is a long held practice by both parties.
I'm not a fan of Bush, but he was re-elected by a majority and I will live with that. Though, if the RNC gets caught like the RNC got caught during the Nixon re-election campaign in 1972, I say throw him out. Too bad there are not many reporters today that would take the risks that Woodward did.
The obligatory "Ur all seeing black helicopters" rant from the right as if actually winning and probably winning by enough, so that even if this were true and there was some fraud you;d probably win anyhow. And yet, even that's not enough, no. You have to moan like the permanent victims you imagine yourselves to be. Which is pretty shameful and puts you in the same basket as third world tyrants and military juntas. Always the victim, and there is always permanent Emmanuel Goldstein enemy out there for you.
This could be a good example of cred poisoning tactics.
Soon there will be a "Programmer made up fraud story" headline and the public will go Ahhh...see...it wasn't any vote fraud going on...just some wacko guy and a bunch of tin foil hats
Cred poisoning has been used for ages all around the world with great success.
Seriously, you can't trust the parties to commission software, or vet it properly. So legislation requiring it to be Open Source only seems reasonable.
Things like this make me glad I'm an ex-patriate American. I love my country, I just hate all the assholes who live in it. Here, in Canada, my neighbors have an excuse, they're Canadian, and don't get a vote. At home, my neighbors have no such excuse. Most of them wouldn't even have voted, assholes and fools all. Some greater portion would have voted for the party of crooks and liars, assholes and fools all. Some lesser portion would have voted for the party which failed to vet software in keeping with their own (and the populace's) best interest, assholes and fools all. As for the remainder, well, they won't be assholes, or fools, but they are probably as frustrated and bitter as I am, and who wants that in a neighbor?
The thing of it is, Lincoln and Washington couldn't win a nomination, let alone a presidential election nowadays. They simply had too much honor and integrity. They were, by and large good men, honest men, and we are too "smart and sophisticated" to put such people in high office anymore...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
I recall that there was quite an upstir when Profumo was caught his pants down.
Article
Guess there is more than one here who might symphathize (.)(.).
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Also, Google does not bring up anything that connects any "Clinton Curt" to software programming. My opinion is that this is tin foil hat material. But it is fun to watch people run around frothing at the mouth!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Also, Google does not bring up anything that connects any "Clinton Curtis" to software programming. My opinion is that this is tin foil hat material. But it is fun to watch people run around frothing at the mouth!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I saw this stuff yesterday. It looked amusing, but with all the stuff about murders, the CIA and the like, it looked like a tin foil hat number. Who knows. However, the is a real issue that hasn't got much attention. This concerns how easy it is to swap vote counts on certain tabulator machines, whilst leaving no trace at all in the logs. The technique is illustrated and discussed at http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~isb9112/election/. THIS is much more of a concern.
It's 100% FACT if you read the articles
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Black Box Voting, a group researching voting fraud, is basically in agreement with you.
They are very concerned about stories like this that may derail public outrage from legitimate investigations to unrealistic conspiracy theories that are easily discredited.
They are looking for recommendations on migrating their forums to something more secure, and to a better service provider, since they have been compromised several times. If anyone on slashdot could recommend solutions to them, I think they'd appreciate it.
-------
Incite and flee.
I want to see the actual code and see how it works and how it is deployed. It needs to be put out there and there really should be controls on these voting machines to control software updates if there are none right now.
Realistically you would be able to compile and deploy binaries with an MD5 checksum just like is done with Open Source projects to verify the binary is unmodified since delivery. I would like them to test each deployed voting machine to see if the binary checksum matches a compiled version of the code.
If they do not match it is a clear sign of tampering. In that case the votes from that machine should be tossed out or somehow the real votes should be determined. Perhaps the code adjusted 30% of the votes to the desired candidate and the true result could be counted. Ideally there should be a revote in any affected district.
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
Should we call for inspection and disassembly of all the voting machine code to see if it contains any of these secret vote tampering functions he was asked to include in his prototype?
The government strips us of our civil liberties in the name of "security", why can't we spin the table around on them for a change?
Guess the programmer never heard of Perl, eh?
Sorry, we had forgotten that
Republican == "Upstanding, never lie, cheat or steal, or in any other way do anything wrong"
Democrat == "Lieing Commie pervert bastard who would do anything to anyone, just because".
Or maybe there are some good people with different points of view that arrive at them honestly on both side of the equation, and some that dont on both side of the equation.
If you believe the former, then *why* didnt those lieing cheating Democrats win this last election?
emt 377 emt 4
This Clint guy must be a pretty bad programmer. His description of the vote rigging system is pure crap. I guess all this VB programming really fried his brain after a while :)
Voting machine code should obviously be open sourced, but I'm preaching to the choir on that one. In the meantime, the code in place on 11/2 must be examined to determine if there was foul play in the election.
7 .htm
The general consensus of this thread seems to be that there is no evidence of fraud in the 11/2 elections, and yet there is an abundance of fishy exit poll data.. AND it almost all points in one direction (that would be to the right). The few states that didn't experience exit poll 'Red Shift' are basically irrelevant states. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S0022
Look at the numbers... we have the most suspicious/inconsistent exit poll results in the history of exit polls in this country, and the best our media can do is question the validity of exit polls? Our govenment is simultaneously alledging fraud in Ukraine, almost exclusively because of inconsistent exit polls. Is anyone paying attention here? When we 'monitor' a third world election, guess what our monitoring weapon of choice is? That's right, exit polls. There IS a safety net in place against this sort of thing, and it DID do it's job.... but we're not doing ours, as citizens.
That's ridiculous.... One ten pound baby is more than enough of a meal.
The Democrats introduced the draft bill as a scare tactic and then tried to pretend like it was a Bush initiative because of the Iraq War. Neither party is innocent of the OP's accusation here.
Somehow I don't think that a Republican candidate would be inclined to hire a left-wing nutjob conspiracy theorist and fraud to do this kind of work for him.
But then politicians have been known to do dumb things from time to time...
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Read the farking afidavit. The person who wrote it is a republican.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The income tax is already ridiculously progressive.
10%: $0 - $6,000
15%: $6000 - $26,250
27%: $26,250 - $63,550
30%: $63,550 - $132,600
35%: $132,600 - $288,350
38.6%: $288,350+
Stop spreading lies. It isn't working very well anyway.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Someone who actually knows the facts!
"A point to emphasize: he's not making any claims of actual fraud occurring in the Florida elections."
this is not surprising, as all the election fraud apparently went on in Ohio this year.
I know itegrity isn't exactly popular anymore, so people forget why it was useful.
"The appearence of impropriety is improper."
Observers can't tell the difference between something that appears like it might be dishonest from something that actually is without very careful investigation, which takes a lot of time, and effort. So, don't do anything that could appear dishonest if you're not dishonest.
What he should have done is send a letter from his office to the major newspapers in his area describing his misgivings with electronic voting, how he's been unsatisfied with scant media attention, the lack of government action, his plan to address these problems, and how exactly he expects his plan to work. Send letters to the stations in the major tv markets he'd be fine with going to, expressing his interest in discussing the matter with them.
He needed to do something publicly to announce his development of a thermonuclear weapon for fascism. He did it in secret, unless he did create some public record and people are only finding it newsworthy now (!!), it's too expensive to trust him now. What ever unfortunate punishment he recieves he absolutely brought on himself. And he may have ment well, but he deserves it. This spectical, the finger pointing, the end of his career, that's the price of not having integrity.
I strongly disagree that this claim is extraordinary.
There is absolutely nothing extraordinary about the claim that somebody might want to steal an election. The fact is that government contracters do a hell of a lot of stealing in plain sight, by hiring influential lobbying firms to steer business their way, or to move legislation and regulation in a way that is specially favorable to them. An election is worth a lot of money.
Nor, unfortunately, is there anything extraordinary about the claim that somebody might want to discredit a politician he didn't like with a story that can't definitively be proved. There is enough ill will that any kind of accusation will "stick" in the minds of plenty of people.
My own personal policy on stories like this is to keep an open mind. There needs to be a proper investigation of this accusation. At the very least, Mr. Feeney deserves to have his reputation cleared if this is manufactured.
Of course one possible (or perhaps even the most likely) outcome of such an investigation is that nothing can be proved. In which case we should extend Mr. Feeney the benefit of the doubt. However, this points out the big flaw that everyone here knows and that practically nobody in the general public knows: the electronic voting systems that are currently in use cannot be verified against tampering.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Democrat == "Lieing Commie pervert bastard who would do anything to anyone, just because".
Damn, that is almost dead on. Here, I'll fix it for you.
Democrat == "Lying dimwitted Commie pervert bastard who can not spell, and would do anything to anyone, to further the communist agenda and speed along the world communist movement which will lead us to one world government and eventual *TOTAL ENSLAVEMENT""
There that should cover it.
Republican == "Upstanding, never lie, cheat or steal, or in any other way do anything wrong"
more like
Republican == "Upstanding individual, who would never lie, cheat or steal, or in any other way do anything wrong. High moral values, along with fiscal and personal responsibility who constantly battles the evil communist underground within America".
FIXED!
it won't be the Democrats that prove it. They're a party run by handwringing pussies from an alternate reality. No money, no leadership, no plan.
All they really have going for them is that they're not pure evil. Which is why I wasted my vote on them.
Diebold is the worst. Walmart could do a better job, designing secure voting machines and the network to connect them. Dell could do a better job.
Christ, Darryl Mcbride could do a better job. If he ever stops smoking that crack and ditches some lawyers, he could probably make that company into a halfway profitable enterprise.
Santa Cruz Orignization for Rigged Elections
This maxim refers to life, more than science, unfortunately. In real life, we do not, and should not, spend the same resources to validate every single assertion we encounter; this would be a gross waste of resources.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
"why can't we spin the table around on them for a change?"
To get their way, they can and will go as far as to destroy you. On the other hand, you are not serious enough about any of these issues to take steps to literally destroy them.
And that's really the reason. There are not tens of millions of people, all of whom are at the very end of the rope, for whom life under the current government has become so intolerable that death would be preferable to living another day under these conditions -- and you might as well have part of a coup as you go out.
And we aren't there yet. Probably not one single person has decided that he has nothing left to lose, and the last few seconds of his miserable life might as well be spent blowing up the supreme court building or killing the president and the white house staff.
If anyone was to this point, it would have happened by now. We are so far from this stimulus, it's not even funny.
The buzz is he is going to be one of the people testifying at the Conyers hearing in D.C. This will be blogged here:
http://www.truthout.org/cblog.shtml
Everyone has been speculating like wild over whether this is true and what the implications are. The affidavit also provides backup evidence to anecdotal accounts that police patrols may have been placed in spots intended to suppress the Black vote in Florida, for instance. It's really about intent, more than means.
Someone had to do it.
More nubian boobies are good for democracy?
I find you ideology intriguing, and I would like a pamphlet. With pictures. Ah hell, it's the holidays, just give me the christmas issue of blacktail.
Is there any purpose behind the design of US voting machines beyond easing of election fraud? From what I've seen, there is no open source, not sound authentication techniques, no paper audit trail-none of the basic stuff that I would want in a secure voting system. That tells me these are not voting machines but fraud facilitation machines.
Then why bring it up?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
...to tell is this is genuine Sarcastic Wit or genuine Caustic Right-Wing Bush Supporter Rhetoric!
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Hey, anything device that gets the idiotic idea of a no receipt voting system questioned in public is good. IMO, the ends(grabbing the attention of the Oprah/pro-wrestling crowd) justifies the means (FUD).
If they don't get those machines with hidden maintanance touchscreen buttons out of there before 2006, we are going to have some really weird election results in two years.
I mean, come on, now that every hacker in America knows that there are hidden buttons on the screen, some perhaps even naughty, is any single one of you going to be able to resist the temptation to poke around looking for them?
Someone had to do it.
It you can't see that the exact same thing happened in the US as in the Ukraine, you're in denial.
The exact same type of polls that proved voter fraud in the Ukraine proved voter fraud in the US.
Kerry was up by 5 points in the exit polls on election day. The exit polls were incredibly accurate predictors of final results in states without black box machines. In states with black box machines, every single state showed huge variance with the exit polls, and every single variance benefitted Bush.
It's either million to one or billion to one odds, depending on the study) against the way the exit polls variances happened being a coincidence.
Isn't this just a magicians trick? i.e. look here not over there?
In Florida they had a "I have not been found incapable..." checkbox on the registration form. Fail to check that box and your registration form is thrown away (even though you declare yourself fit to vote wit the signature).
A simple trick would be to tell your campaigners to make sure that box is ticked (or perhaps tick it yourself for likely republican voters, or pretick the forms handed to your supporters).
I guess maybe 1 in twenty voters would miss that checkbox or fail to understand its significance.
Right there thats a 2.5% swing, without any other tricks. Perhaps though, it would show up if the ink was different for that checkbox.
It's important to realize that if fraud does turn up, Republicans will likely try to blame the programmer thereby isolating the incident from the Republican party. It IS NOT the fault of the programmer, as many people have stated above, this is a legitimate whitehat security exercise, BUT if this programmers code were misused it is the fault of the person who USED it and they HAVE TO be prosecuted for that, NOT the programmer.
We have to make sure the story stays that way all the way through to the end.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Wait, wait, wait, What does that have to do with anything? I'm a registered Democrat, but in my opinion, Democrats are WAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY too left lately. I never bothered to change my party affiliation, and generally don't ally myself with Democrats.
More importantly, if this guy wanted to start a story about this, what better way to establish you're not a partisan wacko than to register Republican. I would do the same thing if I were this guy.
if you had bothered to spend 30 minutes researching you would have discovered that this flap in Ukraine is a CIA/Soros-sponsored "revolution" similar to the ones engineered in Georgia and Belarus. it's goal is simple: get a candidate (Yushenko) elected who will turn around and privatize all of the state assets and sell them to investors at dirt-cheap prices. do a google search for "CIA Soros Ukraine" or "Soros CIA Eastern Europe". it's a long-standing and well-planned attempt to overthrow a country's soviet-leaning government and replace it with a pro-western regieme, and has little to do with 'freeom' or 'the people' or any of that crap. plus, only HALF of Ukraine supports Yushenko. don't believe the hype.
Wait, wait, wait, What does that have to do with anything?
The claim was made that the affadavit is not trustable because of liberal bias. Whether or not the writer was actually a liberal might perhaps have a tiny little bit to do with that, don't you think?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I didn't see "LIEbrul" or "Hitlery" anywhere in there.
Rove was the one that was the assistant to
the ego that bites, the facts which catch! beware the p.r. bird, and shun the knee jerk give_her_cash. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboa rd.php?az=view_all&address=203x108750#109097
many moons ago bev came on a political board where i mod and, in effect, demanded that she be able to use any and all posts without atribution. going to send the 'gems' out to radio d.j.'s. for a fee of course.
bev has burned more bridges behind her than carter has liver pills.
my 1/50th of a dollar.
-JohnTomato
Warlord of Silver Spring
This one might be readable...andyway... Karl Rove was the one who served as Donald Segretti assisatant in the Nexon administration. Segretti of the infamous Muskie letter incident.
Site...
l l.pdf
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm
link to pdf of study...
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/Documents/ExitPo
Silver Spring, Maryland, right, armchair warlord? The Pentagon suburb? Exactly which industry are *you* dependent on?
--
make install -not war
Sad thing is, companies like Diebold will lobby against such legislation because it 'removes choice'. Wasn't that the whole argument of Microsoft et al. in attempting to counter pro-open-source legislation in other areas, was that it 'removed choice' - i.e., that it removed the choice of being able to use closed software.
And they'll throw money out to ensure that people listen to them. And end up denying choice to use open-source software in the process. In that case, I think that should it be possible to choose open or closed source software on a state-by-state basis, as determined by the will of the people in that state.
FC Closer
i'm an independent i.t. consultant for non-profits. i favor those groups in the housing and science sectors. former empolyee of cooperative housing foundation and the american institute of biological sciences. now take a deep breath and then bite me. -J.T. Warlord of Silver Spring RECON
The Bush adminsistration has lied about so many things so often that a claim of dishonesty against another neo-con no longer requires extraordinary evidence. Dishonesty fits the pattern of the Bush Administration. The only people who will be shocked when the voter fraud stories finally break against the Bushies are the same neo-cons who think Bennie Hinn actually makes those people get up out of those wheelchairs and think "tongues" is a language.
If this kind of statistics were a proof of fraud, we'd have to incarcerate all blacks, for example...
Anyway, I'm more inclinded to trust MIT and Calltech whom this guy tries to refute on page 4, as well as just about everybody else -- most Democrats included.
The man (and you) are so desperate, it shows. For example, on page 5 of the document he says: "but it makes not sense that NEP would ever to [sic] distribute unweighted data". Well, on page 4 he claims to be using the data that "reportedly were not meant to be released". Did you mention "discrepancy"?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Ah, IC. I sit corrected, thanks.
and no, i don't contract directly, with the u.s. federal government. ms. harris' background, as detailed in the link provided, should give any being capable of rational thought enough grist for their cud to make an informed decision. foolish mortal. -J.T. Warlord of Silver Spring
...is why there isn't total outrage over "closed source" development of voting machine software. Sighting "trade secrets" as a reason for hiding the source code from the public should immediately raise red flags. The notion of secret voting machine software is completely ludicrous to me.
require the exact same level of proof as any other verifiable fact. Regardless of what The Annoying Randi (tm) might claim.
Great. Osama Bin Laden is still running around free in the desert, dragging his dialysis machine behind him, while neo-cons go after the real dangers to society... those statisticians of evil and Tommy Chong's bongs of mass destruction.
This reminds me of that day in Westwood I saw the LAPD riot squad charge the students trying to celebrate the UCLA basketball title with batons and tear gas after we all watched them stand around and do absolutely nothing for 3 days during the whole Rodney King riot. LAPD bravely defending the city from evil botanists. Hou-rah!
All those people pay more in taxes than I make in 10 years, so I think that the current tax is fair. The owner of the company that I worked for made a pretty good living, nothing extravagent, but nice nonetheless. He paid somewhere near 47% in taxes, that is INSANE, why own a small business if you get taxed like that? What's the point? The overly rich don't pay as much in taxes, relatively speaking, as my boss did. When I say relative, it means that $2000 in taxes on someone making $20,000 a year is a significantly larger burden than $300,000 in taxes on someone making $1,000,000 a year. The balance being $18,000 and $700,000 respectively. It is much easier to live on $700,000 than $18,000 now isn't it? I would be glad to pay that much in taxes if I made that much money!!!!
If Kerry was the answer, it must have been a stupid question.
The UN - The largest "political" cause of death.
"The policy, invoked in June, was authorized by an emergency executive order signed by President Bush three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "
l d/ 2002111337_stoploss07.html
When you sign a contract for a given amount of time and they don't let you go home, that's enforced conscription.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationwor
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Bush just used the Ukranian exit polls to prove voter fraud in the Ukraine. So one person who disagrees with you accessment of exit polls is... George W. Bush and the US Department of State. The State Department has used official returns that diverged from exit poll data to have 4 elections thrown out for fraud in the last 20 years.
And the MIT/Caltech release was a joke. It was released anonomously, and a Dean from the MIT school that supposedly released that study came out the next week and completely undercut it.
And he uses the data that CNN released on the CNN website as his source. The unweighted data that found it's way to blogs was not used by him to tally these results.
That's what they want you to think.
The so-called debunking that I saw wasn't much of a debunk. It pretty much consisted of some handwaiving about how the discrepancy might have been caused by 'get-the-vote-out' campaigns getting more Republican voters out.
Of course, there were also Democrat get-the-vote-out campaigns, generally countering the Republican campaigns. More notable about the so-called-debunking is that it provides no real explanation as to why it was only the sequoia machines that had the systematic anomalies, and not other machines (( such as the touch-screen boxes which he perceptively points out only had 2 anomalous counties )).
If the anomalies were a result of get-the-vote-out campaigns, then we would have expected similar distributions of results in votes tallied by other machines. The "debunking" indirectly points out that that wider distribution did not occur. Lack of widespread anomalies in touch-screen counts supports an interim thesis that there was something naughty going on with the seqoia counts, as opposed to countering it.
It kinda makes sense to me that -- presuming that there was vote tampering code available in Diebold boxes -- that such code would not have been used (or would have only been used very sparingly), since Diebold boxes have recieved so much attention in the last year or so. Sequoia boxes (excuse the misspelling -- I'm too lazy to look it up right now) on the other hand are percieved to have been a bit less controversial.
Personally: I consider the Berkeley results to be 'interesting' -- and pointing to a need for a more complete investigation. The anomalies that they point to seem improbable to the point of near impossibility. So improbable that I'd prefer some collaberating information before accepting, unreservedly, that the Republicans would be that bold about rigging an election.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
George W. Bush just demanded that the Ukrainian election be overturned becasue official results varied from the exit polls. So did the whole US State Department.
Oooops, you forgot about that, huh?
George W. Bush said last week that the exit polls in the Ukraine proved voter fraud in the Ukraine.
So... are you saying George W. Bush is a tin-hat conspiracy theorist?
In can't wait to see how you are going to spin you way out of the fact that Goerge W. Bush just said last week that exit polls were proof of fraud in Ukraine. If they are proof of fraud in Ukraine, they are proof of fraud here.
You mean you don't have access to any copy of the source code, let alone every revision of a system used to determine elections? In that case the spec needs to be rewritten and the bank accounts of those responsible for making such a cretinous decision examined for evidence of taking bribes. This is one of the points where the "are you stupid, are you corrupt, or don't you care about doing your job" question needs to be asked, since there does not appear to be any other options available.
Forget the shiny new technology, if the entire voting process is not open to scrutiny it is open to abuse. A few jobs with a quick and nasty software company in a marginal electorate is not worth the potential for abuse. Perhaps a Federal election organisation running free, fair and consistant elections (two out of three is not good enough) like you see in other countries is the way to go - instead of things being down at the state or county level. There are a lot of countries that have built on a combination of the USA and Swiss election systems over the last century that may be worth looking at.
I hope so, otherwise that station chief is toast. The willful dissemenation of classified information , in some instances depending on motive, can be construed as treason. Treason in times of war have historically been punished by death. Best case, this isn't treason. In which case, the station chief loses his job and goes to jail for a period of time.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
For me, I don't object to a closed-source propriaty software solution for voting machines... i.e. Diebold or Microsoft.
I do object to having the source code concealed, however. If you put something into a voting machine, the full details of that voting machine should be disclosed and published, from every transistor and capacitor to every line of code for the source code, and the details available to any registered voter that would be using that machine... meaning me if it were in my voting precinct.
Copyright can still be maintained, and indeed a formal registration of the software with the Library of Congress will essentially do the same thing anyway, so why all the fuss. You would have to provide source code if you suggest that there has been copyright infringement (as SCO is finding out the hard way).
There also needs to be a guarentee that the source code disclosed in this manner is in fact the actual source code that is used by the voting machine. And attempts to obfuscate the source code should have penalties as well, particularly if it is obvious that the obfuscation was deliberate as opposed to simply poor programming techniques from a novice programmer.
Potentially, even the compilers/chip programmers need to be available to authenticate that the compiled binaries are identical.
Ideally, what would happen is that each political party involved (as well as other interested parties like the ACLU, black box voting, etc.) would get a CD-ROM with all of the sources and schematics involved, and each party could review the source code for potential fraud as well as independent verification of the binaries on the voting machines. Essentially, each political party will verify for its members that the voting machine is acceptable for use. Even a well-organized 3rd Party can squeek real hard and potentially win some votes if they can demonstrate that the other political parties are colluding with each other to fix the vote totals in this manner.
Where I live, each political party is allowed to have their own voting judge present in each precinct. As part of the set up of the voting booths before the voting occurs, each judge can check the serial numbers from something sent by their respective party (not the state government here... note the check on the system). If they suspect fraud, the party headquarters can be notified and potentially the suspect voting machine could be dealt with. Or even a boycott of the precinct that day if you think the fraud is that bad.
Blackboxvoting.org, a non-profit group that is carefully investigating vote fraud, has published a statement on why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation. They have a number of reasons why they suspect this. It's all on their main page ay www.blackboxvoting.org.
Here's the google links to the search for Ukraine voter fraud. They state that the primary evidence for fraud was the US and Western nation paid exit polls data.
e +voter+fraud&btnG=Search+News
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Ukrain
I realize it's tough spinning your way out of your leader endorsing exit polls as proof of fraud just last week. You'd think after stealing an election, he'd have the good sense to stay off the record regarding how accurate he thinks exit polls are... but that your problem, not mine.
And it's relatively easy to check, too. ,p>If the checksums don't match, Q.E.D.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The American's are Stupid argument isn't getting a lot of traction
...When you really think about it, it's actually more like an absurd sitcom.
Trust me, over here in Europe it is.
Life must be one big soap opera for you guys... At least when you try to have an election or something.
"Will John find out that George hacked the voting machines? Is Laura really pregnant with Rummie's child? You will find out about this and much more in the next episode of All my Senators!"
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
www.dikshunairee.com
I am astounded at this statement: "I can't believe the Democrats were stupid enough to allow [this]," he says. "I can't imagine anyone going to a bank and not getting a receipt. But yet we have our voting machines that way. It strikes me as really odd that machines like that could even exist.?"
Why not, the goons keep beer and gas prices down, and let loose the dogs of dumbed down drooling mediocrity in the form of bread and circuses "entertainment". That's all the herds of mouth breathers REALLY care about, and it's obvious as can be.
Here's the deal as "raw" as I can make it.
The government of the US was hijacked by globalist insiders who are members of the loosely termed "military industrial complex" as coined by president Eisenhower on his retirement speech. This is a fact, time to grow up and deal with it.
They control the top levels of the D and R party through bribery, intimidation, blackmail and extortion. Everything from honeytraps to bags of cash and everything in between, plus the implied threat of ultra violence should one priveleged enough to attain that status seek to go against their wishes and mandates. There is no crime they will not commit, or haven't committed. None.
The two parties cooperate and run the US as a massive profits center, after all the US is the worlds wealthiest nation (so far) and it's worth a LOT OF MONEY to control the government, so they cooperate in this junta, and it IS a sophisticated police state junta.
High level Military officers and the (paramilitary)Police are also in on the deal, is is more common that not for them to finally pension out then immediately become "officers" in various Transnational industries. This is "normal" and an expected part of the payout.
High level intelligence agents/bosses are chronic serial abusers of the law and got their fingers in any number of legal and illegal profitable pies, such as drug and aarms smuggling, bankruptcy court shenanigans, stock manipulations (you think echelon isn't valuasble economic intel?). Google CIA corruption for a starter. The current head cheese Goss is "gross" in that respect, as a "for instance".
High level Governmental Bureaucrats are in on the deal, And lower level governmental employees/normal workers know full well you NEVER "rock the boat" or you will definetly get into trouble, whistleblower statutes not withstanding. I imagine that can be confirmed right here on this thread from any number of "nom de forume" named posters who work for uncle sugar.
The "vote" has been rigged for a LONG time now, google "votescam".
The latest electronic voting methods are just a smoother way to control the vote, and the election process is a joke, the "nominees" are picked in advance and the primaries are a dog and pony show to keep the rubes and rabble amused and faked out that they actually have a "vote" that means anything other than the military industrial complex maintaining control. Nothing that would jeopardise that is allowed to occur.. For instance, several internet-researchable references knew that edwards would be the dems VP pick well in advance,and publically predicted it, because it followed a pattern,i.e; those who get the sacred invites and blessings to the bilderberger conferences get the election nod. The shrub attended as well this past year when he went to coincidentlly "visit the pope" during the same exact time that the conference was being held reasonable close by. He got his next set of marching orders then. This happened and is again, googleable. And kerry got picked because out of the pack, he was the other skull and bonesman, and do not neglect that factoid in its importance and it is part of this mans "wonderment" about why the "dems aren't pushing it hard". It's because it was rigged so that the dem K guy wouyld take a fall after a "close and valiant and hotly contested election", again, part of the dog and pony show..He took a dive on purpose. The grassroots got suckered again. The el
Sorry, but I call FUD. If you are comparing the electoral process in the United States of America to that going on in Ukraine, you've got a screw loose.
You leftie liberals hate the United States so much, you probably believe GWB eats babies and kicks puppies.
I have two moderator points left. How do I mod this story as -1: Flamebait?
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
Some of what hes said isnt entirely true - you could certainly find any rigging from looking at the binary, it might take allot of work but it would always be possible. What you really need is to have the program stored on a memory card in the machine, you could then design it to write over the incriminating parts of itself after the election. You would need two versions of the source code - one would be the dirty original which you would want to keep secret and the other would be the 'public' version which would compile to the identical binary that was in the machine after it had over-written itself, obviously you would have to prevent inspection of the binary in the machines until after the election and the whole thing would be very difficult to design, but do-able. Come to think of it, the diebold machines stored their programs on flash didnt they?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Just wanted to say that we think similarly on this issue.
What if vote fraud has been widespread for decades, and if 2000 hadn't been so close we never would have caught it this time around?
What if this country woke up and realized we're not sure if ANY of our elected officials are in office legitimately, and we may never be sure?
Now can we have open source voter verifiable e-voting systems that can't be hacked just by ordinary back-door exploits in a certain very large monopoly's database software, and can't be hacked at all without leaving a paper audit trail?
I can always hope, eh?
There are three primary reasons we invaded Iraq.
1- The Anglo/US juntaists want a permanent military presence in the vast middle of the last remaining superoil fields. If they don't, someone else will, and that someone is China, and it is NOT a joke. This is the mother of all motherlodes. There is not enough oil for 6 billions to all be middle class, in other words, yet "they", the worlds six billions, all want to be. He who controls the black gold controls global reality. The bottom line is tangibles are always worth more than artifical constructs, and oil is "the" tangible asset on the planet, that and clean fresh water, and will be for the 21st century. Hence, a permanent military prsence in perpetuity in the middle east, and in a big dog kinda way. The PNAC docs spell it out completely.
2-Saddam had become uncontrollable when he indicated a move from using PetroDollars for his oil to PetroEuros. They were OK with the status quo of his regime right until that time frame. Losing global "reserve currency" status is THE number #1 event they can not handle or explain away or deal with, so Saddam had to be swatted down then.
3-It's what the globalists do,they love it, it's their gig, they arrange and finance and equip for wars, because they are very profitable, immensely so. they dig the money and the power. They get off on it, literally.
WMD and "he's a dictator" and other nonsense is part of the mass fakeout. They put him INTO power, remember? He was their mideast golden boy for a long time, and they supplied him with chemical arms, helicopter and airplane delivery systems, conventional arms, systematic training for his officers, intel, etc. The same guys did it back then who are in the Junta now, them or their progeny/peers/associates.
I'll bite.
Firstly, exit polls are usually accurate to within a couple of percentage points. A three-point swing (in the differential) between the exit poll and the final tally is very unlikely but not unthinkable. Ohio swung by 6 points, Florida by 8, North Carolina by 12, New Hampshire by 15, Pennsylvania by 18.
Secondly, of the swing states mentioned above, all of them use electronic voting machines, many of which have no audit trail, and regarding which many obvious flaws were reported. Why anyone would trust a counting machine that can't count is beyond me.
Thirdly, all of those swings favoured the Republicans. The Democrats won four of those five exit polls (North Carolina was 49-51), two of those states changed sides in the final count - by the merest chance, Florida and Ohio.
That's rich. How was it not close enough for the Dems to "steal" it but not so disparate that the GOP couldn't actually "steal" it without anyone noticing?
As with 2000, the Democrats probably got the most votes this time around as well, and again had no chance of getting a fair count of them. Your ignorance of what happened in Florida in 2000 is stark, but not astounding. In 2004, we're seeing it all over again, but in more and various places. You should watch the Flash movie in my sig, as it has links to much more info.
The Democrats won, but the Republicans cheated, and everybody else loses. Deal with that.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
If proven, it would also indicate that such a high-ranking Republican would also be willing to get personally involved (stupid, but still believable -- it had to happen sometime/somewhere and these meetings seem to have been reasonably private).
The rest of the story about dead investigators, fired wistle-blowers and emailed warnings just adds a nice sense of drama to the whole thing. Great for attention-getting but not much else.
Interesting for me is that the idea of an 'easter-egg' which would allow you to change the vote on the fly is pretty close to my own example of how to cook an election in the in the most general (software-wise) and non-intrusive manner (software-wise and physical accessability).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
You are half right on your first point. The US takes about 20% of the oil from the middle east right now. That means 80% goes somewhere else, with a large (and ever-growing) part going to Asia (China a big percentage of that) and India. Therefore having a stable middle east is in the best interests of not just the US, but the up-and-coming developing super economies.
.agrippa.
China doesn't have the capacity to have a military presence in the middle east just yet, and they probably never will. China needs the US to buy their goods, European banks to invest in them, and Arabs to provide them with oil. Therefore you won't see China pissing off any of them with a military intervention in the middle east.
The only military force with the capacity to go somewhere not next door and do something once it gets there is the US, as the US has the world's only true blue water navy. China's military may eventually rival the US around 2025, but many economists, to our Pentagon's war planning division's dismay, believe that China will concentrate more on their economic development and less on trying to be a near-peer competitor military to the US.
So, basically the only force able, and willing, to stabalize the middle east is the US, and someone needs to stabalize it for the world's sake. Economies that aren't being taxed heavily to buy oil are economies that can grow. Conversely, economies that are forced to pay out the nose for oil aren't going to grow and the newbie powerhouse ones (read: Brazil, India, China) will start to decay. Note: this is not an argument that invading Iraq was justified just yet, but it was probably inevitable. The US will need to concentrate much more on coalition building than Bush thinks it does in order to lead an effective peacekeeping and nation building force.
Just for completeness: One of the letters I wrote about using easter-eggs to modify a vote on the fly.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
No, I'm saying YOU are a tin-hat conspiracy theorist. You're the one pushing the theory that exit polls here in the states are what to watch. Then, when you're back into a corner, you trot out some fellow conspiracy theorists' paper about the election. NOW you're trying to link the Ukraine and the states. That's why you're WRONG.
.... Actually, now that I think about it, by all means, keep this up. It's exactly this sort of thing that drove most Americans to the Republicans this time, and away from the Democrats. The more of this you do, the better it is for us.
Exit polls in Ukraine were WILDLY off. Even THEY admit that.
Everyone reported that the reason the polls HERE were off was because of a skewing of data, and that news came between 4 and 6 pm.
Skull and Bones is just he-man make-believe time for rich, sheltered ivy-leaguers.
That and it helps you network... like golf.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Preliminary Statement
of the International Republican Institute (IRI)
on the October 31, 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Election
"...On Election Day, IRI observed many problems including:
1. badly maintained voter lists, not previously seen on this scale, which resulted in people being denied their right to vote, and many additional names on voter rolls for which no accounting could be made. This problem was widespread and appeared systemic
2. interference by unauthorized persons into the electoral process was also prevalent throughout the country
3. credible reports of busing of voters among oblasts and polling stations for the purpose of multiple voting
4. the wide disparity in exit polling results raises serious concerns...."
http://www.iri.org/11-01-04-Ukraine.asp
Statement on Ukraine's November 21, 2004 Presidential Run-Off Election
"...based on reliable exit polls and early returns of parallel vote counts, it appears the official election returns, as reported by the CEC, do not reflect the will of the voters of Ukraine...."
http://www.iri.org/pdfs/UkraineRound2-11-22-04.pdf
Board Of Directors
John McCain Chairman
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Peter T. Madigan Vice - Chairman
Principal, Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland, Dover & Stewart
Former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs
J. William Middendorf, II Secretary - Treasurer
Chairman, Middendorf & Associates, Inc.
Former Secretary of the Navy
Former U.S. Ambassador to the European Community, Organization of American States and the Netherlands
Gahl Hodges Burt
Vice Chairman, American Academy in Berlin
Former White House Social Secretary
U.S. Representative David Dreier
Chairman of the House Committee on the Rules
Chairman of the California Republican Congressional Delegation
Lawrence S. Eagleburger
Former U.S. Secretary of State
Former U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia
Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr.
President and CEO of the American Gaming Association
Former Chairman of the Republican Party
Alison B. Fortier
Director, Lockheed Martin Missile Defense Programs
Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Mayor James A. Garner
Mayor, Incorporated Village of Hempstead, New York
Susan Golding
President and CEO, The Golding Group, Inc.
Former Mayor, City of San Diego
U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, (R-Neb)
Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Economic Policy, Export, and Trade Promotion
Cheryl F. Halpern
Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors
Executive Board Member, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
William J. Hybl
Chairman and CEO of El Pomar Foundation
President Emeritus of the U.S. Olympic Committee
Former Special Counsel to the President of the United States
Robert M. Kimmitt
Executive Vice President, Global Public Policy, Time Warner
Former US Ambassador to Germany
Former National Security Council Executive Secretary and General Counsel
Dr. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
U.S. Representative Jim Kolbe, (R-Ariz)
Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Finances and Related Programs
Fred Meyer
Chairman of the Board, Aladdin Industries, LLC
Former Chairman, RNC Victory 2000 and the Presidential Inauguration 2001 Executive Committee
Janet G. M
Preliminary Statement
of the International Republican Institute (IRI)
on the October 31, 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Election
"...On Election Day, IRI observed many problems including:
1. badly maintained voter lists, not previously seen on this scale, which resulted in people being denied their right to vote, and many additional names on voter rolls for which no accounting could be made. This problem was widespread and appeared systemic
2. interference by unauthorized persons into the electoral process was also prevalent throughout the country
3. credible reports of busing of voters among oblasts and polling stations for the purpose of multiple voting
4. the wide disparity in exit polling results raises serious concerns...."
http://www.iri.org/11-01-04-Ukraine.asp [iri.org]
Statement on Ukraine's November 21, 2004 Presidential Run-Off Election
"...based on reliable exit polls and early returns of parallel vote counts, it appears the official election returns, as reported by the CEC, do not reflect the will of the voters of Ukraine...."
http://www.iri.org/pdfs/UkraineRound2-11-22-04.p df [iri.org]
Board Of Directors
John McCain Chairman
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Peter T. Madigan Vice - Chairman
Principal, Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland, Dover & Stewart
Former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs
J. William Middendorf, II Secretary - Treasurer
Chairman, Middendorf & Associates, Inc.
Former Secretary of the Navy
Former U.S. Ambassador to the European Community, Organization of American States and the Netherlands
Gahl Hodges Burt
Vice Chairman, American Academy in Berlin
Former White House Social Secretary
U.S. Representative David Dreier
Chairman of the House Committee on the Rules
Chairman of the California Republican Congressional Delegation
Lawrence S. Eagleburger
Former U.S. Secretary of State
Former U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia
Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr.
President and CEO of the American Gaming Association
Former Chairman of the Republican Party
Alison B. Fortier
Director, Lockheed Martin Missile Defense Programs
Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Mayor James A. Garner
Mayor, Incorporated Village of Hempstead, New York
Susan Golding
President and CEO, The Golding Group, Inc.
Former Mayor, City of San Diego
U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, (R-Neb)
Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Economic Policy, Export, and Trade Promotion
Cheryl F. Halpern
Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors
Executive Board Member, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
William J. Hybl
Chairman and CEO of El Pomar Foundation
President Emeritus of the U.S. Olympic Committee
Former Special Counsel to the President of the United States
Robert M. Kimmitt
Executive Vice President, Global Public Policy, Time Warner
Former US Ambassador to Germany
Former National Security Council Executive Secretary and General Counsel
Dr. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
U.S. Representative Jim Kolbe, (R-Ariz)
Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Finances and Related Programs
Fred Meyer
Chairman of the Board, Aladdin Industries, LLC
Former Chairman
The International Republican Institute is a foreign policy adjunct of the GOP. (Not one Democrat on that list)
Preliminary Statement
of the International Republican Institute (IRI)
on the October 31, 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Election
"...On Election Day, IRI observed many problems including:
1. badly maintained voter lists, not previously seen on this scale, which resulted in people being denied their right to vote, and many additional names on voter rolls for which no accounting could be made. This problem was widespread and appeared systemic
2. interference by unauthorized persons into the electoral process was also prevalent throughout the country
3. credible reports of busing of voters among oblasts and polling stations for the purpose of multiple voting
4. the wide disparity in exit polling results raises serious concerns...."
http://www.iri.org/11-01-04-Ukraine.asp [iri.org]
Statement on Ukraine's November 21, 2004 Presidential Run-Off Election
"...based on reliable exit polls and early returns of parallel vote counts, it appears the official election returns, as reported by the CEC, do not reflect the will of the voters of Ukraine...."
http://www.iri.org/pdfs/UkraineRound2-11-22-04.p df [iri.org]
Board Of Directors
John McCain Chairman
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Peter T. Madigan Vice - Chairman
Principal, Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland, Dover & Stewart; Former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs
J. William Middendorf, II Secretary - Treasurer Chairman, Middendorf & Associates, Inc.; Former Secretary of the Navy; Former U.S. Ambassador to the European Community, Organization of American States and the Netherlands
Gahl Hodges Burt; Vice Chairman, American Academy in Berlin; Former White House Social Secretary
U.S. Representative David Dreier Chairman of the House Committee on the Rules; Chairman of the California Republican Congressional Delegation
Lawrence S. Eagleburger; Former U.S. Secretary of State; Former U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia
Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr.; President and CEO of the American Gaming Association; Former Chairman of the Republican Party
Alison B. Fortier; Director, Lockheed Martin Missile Defense Programs; Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Mayor James A. Garner; Mayor, Incorporated Village of Hempstead, New York
Susan Golding
President and CEO, The Golding Group, Inc.; Former Mayor, City of San Diego
U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, (R-Neb) Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Economic Policy, Export, and Trade Promotion
Cheryl F. Halpern; Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors; Executive Board Member, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
William J. Hybl; Chairman and CEO of El Pomar Foundation; President Emeritus of the U.S. Olympic Committee; Former Special Counsel to the President of the United States
Robert M. Kimmitt; Executive Vice President, Global Public Policy, Time Warner; Former US Ambassador to Germany; Former National Security Council Executive Secretary and General Counsel
Dr. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick; Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
U.S. Representative Jim Kolbe, (R-Ariz); Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Finances and Related Programs
Fred Meyer; Chairman of the Board, Aladdin Industries, LLC Former Chairman, RNC Victory 2000 and the Presidential Inauguration 2001 Executive Committee
Janet G. Mullins Grissom; Consultant, Washington Affairs for Ford Motor Company; Former Assistant Secretary of State, Legislative Affairs
Alec L. Poitevint, II; Chairman, Southeastern Minerals, Inc.; National Committeeman, Georgia Republican National Committee
Randy Scheunemann; Presid
The International Republican Institute is a foreign policy adjunct of the GOP. (Not one Democrat on that list)
Preliminary Statement
of the International Republican Institute (IRI)
on the October 31, 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Election
"...On Election Day, IRI observed many problems including:
1. badly maintained voter lists, not previously seen on this scale, which resulted in people being denied their right to vote, and many additional names on voter rolls for which no accounting could be made. This problem was widespread and appeared systemic
2. interference by unauthorized persons into the electoral process was also prevalent throughout the country
3. credible reports of busing of voters among oblasts and polling stations for the purpose of multiple voting
4. the wide disparity in exit polling results raises serious concerns...."
http://www.iri.org/11-01-04-Ukraine.asp [iri.org]
Statement on Ukraine's November 21, 2004 Presidential Run-Off Election
"...based on reliable exit polls and early returns of parallel vote counts, it appears the official election returns, as reported by the CEC, do not reflect the will of the voters of Ukraine...."
http://www.iri.org/pdfs/UkraineRound2-11-22-04.p df [iri.org]
Board Of Directors
John McCain Chairman
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Peter T. Madigan Vice - Chairman
Principal, Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland, Dover & Stewart; Former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs
J. William Middendorf, II Secretary - Treasurer Chairman, Middendorf & Associates, Inc.; Former Secretary of the Navy; Former U.S. Ambassador to the European Community, Organization of American States and the Netherlands
Gahl Hodges Burt; Vice Chairman, American Academy in Berlin; Former White House Social Secretary
U.S. Representative David Dreier Chairman of the House Committee on the Rules; Chairman of the California Republican Congressional Delegation
Lawrence S. Eagleburger; Former U.S. Secretary of State; Former U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia
Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr.; President and CEO of the American Gaming Association; Former Chairman of the Republican Party
Alison B. Fortier; Director, Lockheed Martin Missile Defense Programs; Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Mayor James A. Garner; Mayor, Incorporated Village of Hempstead, New York
Susan Golding
President and CEO, The Golding Group, Inc.; Former Mayor, City of San Diego
U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, (R-Neb) Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Economic Policy, Export, and Trade Promotion
Cheryl F. Halpern; Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors; Executive Board Member, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
William J. Hybl; Chairman and CEO of El Pomar Foundation; President Emeritus of the U.S. Olympic Committee; Former Special Counsel to the President of the United States
Robert M. Kimmitt; Executive Vice President, Global Public Policy, Time Warner; Former US Ambassador to Germany; Former National Security Council Executive Secretary and General Counsel
Dr. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick; Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
U.S. Representative Jim Kolbe, (R-Ariz); Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Finances and Related Programs
Fred Meyer; Chairman of the Board, Aladdin Industries, LLC Former Chairman, RNC Victory 2000 and the Presidential Inauguration 2001 Executive Committee
Janet G. Mullins Grissom; Consultant, Washington Affairs for Ford Motor Company; Former Assistant Secretary of State, Legislative Affairs
Alec L. Poitevint, II; Chairman, Southeastern Minerals, Inc.; National Committeeman, Georgia Republican National Committee
Randy Scheunemann; Presi
Visa and Mastercard don't lose even a single transaction, and believe me there have been many I wish they would have lost, but they don't. Hundreds of billions of transactions every year, and not a single one lost. And people think this is not possible with voting because what?
Funny how the /. crowd seems to hone in on the paper trail is the audit fallacy. Fallacy!? How dare I? Easily, I dare
... cheap. A small percentage will, and even then that percentage will decrease over the next couple cycles. Some places literally have elections every year so in those places that quantity will decrease quite fast. As people are satisfied their ballots are clean they'll stop looking. The rest, given the hype about how paper ballots are the solution, will simply trust it. Assuming of course that the computer code matches what the printout says.
A ballot printout is simply an output device just like a screen is. So I get my printout and go home. My candidate loses. What am I to do? Certainly you must take my ballot because you cant let me take it home and then trust it as a reasonable source for recount.
So, you take my ballot printed up by the computer. Now, since I made it into the booth I've clearly passed the "qualified" barrier.
So what is to prevent the machine from printing multiple ballots, and altering the second one which it printed on a different printer? It wouldn't have to do much to nullify a certain percentage of votes; it'd be one to one.
The ballots will need to be printed such that the computer ballot counting machine can read them in. After all if the ballot is merely a paper record to be used as a backup, your ballot is worthless.
Why? Go back to the top: the printer is simply an output screen. It can print a different ballot than what goes into the db.
"But people check their ballots!" you say? Here, I've got some oceanfont property in Montana to sell
As a coder, I control what the ballot outputs. Say I put the to-be-read-by-machine-for-counting code into, for example, a barcode. And in humant readable (i.e. text) I print who you actually voted for, while in the barcode I out the other candidate. You see the ballot as correct, but it is not correct when read.
Given the margins in todays big elections, it would not take much to swing it. When dealing with machine counting of paper ballots even those printed by machine; how much error would be expected by the average person; 1% 2%? Can that change the outcome? I think we all know that answer to be an affirmative in many elections.
What would be the risk of getting caught in the above scheme? Let us assume that one in five people will check their ballot (assuming that this visual check matches what the ballot-counting machine reads), and I only need to alter one in a hundred. What are the odds someone who checks will see an incorrect ballot? Further as a result of that how many "irregularities" would thus be reported?
If I alter 1%, but only one in four of that 1% get noticed, the irregularity is a quarter point. Only desperate people will cling to that as evidence of deliberate tampering in an age where computers just break, screw things up, and so on. And the courts would likely not rule there was tampering w/o hard evidence which would be difficult to get given the low percentage of irregualrities.
"But we can make it so that the output of the ballot can be visually corroborated!" Bunk. All my votes have been cast on punch card ballots. You know, paper ones. As soon as I remove the ballot from the machine and look at it, I have no way of knowing if it matches. Sure some ballots you could in theory. But look at all the problems people already have with those.
So while paper ballot printout can be useful, it is no solution to the problem. There is but one solution to secure computerized ballot counting. Open source software. That is the lesson in this article. As the man said it could not be hidden from anyone with source code access.
If you want to lobby, lobby for open source code. Lobbying for paper trails as the solution will simply hide it in a different way. A false sense of security, is all that is.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
There are two bills before the US Congress that have been buried in committee since their introduction. Both these bills would require the use of open source software on voting machines and an auditable paper trail.
House: House Bill Senate: Senate Bill
I urge all US citizens to write their representatives requesting action on these bills.
In my searches for open source voting software the best I've found comes from The Open Voting Consortium.
It is time to _stop looking back. It is time to take action for positive change in the US system.sign me "Concerned Citizen"
Could there be a stronger argument for open source software?
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:ifbLjQCWQQwJ: www.georgewbush.com/Students/Calendar/CalendarDeta il.aspx%3FID%3D825+%22yang+enterprises%22+email&hl =en
Could you describe The One Truth to me, please? And do you have the minutes of the meeting where all the eevil leftists agreed to it?
Not that i'm calling you a big fat limbaugh-style blowhard or anything, but in my experience two leftists can usually talk for about, oh, five minutes or so before having a fight. Guess you must have a different kind over there in the land of the "free".
argue the issue not the person making the issue known, such exercises in forum feuds ar pointless and the main reason I left them alone a long time ago. ThinkTank of DU fame
so what were you saying?
[when I say Republican, I mean Evil Republican(TM)]
I think this has to do with the fact that the people in power, who happen to be Republican and who also happen to have won the election on a statistical impossibility, have been fighting against any means to verify the validity of the election.
So my problem is not being able to see the source code. My problem is not seeing any of this on the news until very very recently. My problem is the fact that Jeb Bush (the incumbent's brother, FYI) vetoed the paper trail. My problem is the photographic evidence of Republicans taking trash bags full of vote cartridges out the back door, dumping them, and coming back in the front door with new carts.
People say that the Democrats cheated as much as the Republicans, and while I don't doubt that some of them would have, I don't think they had the means. And I don't get how people doubt citizens with no stock in the political process other than the direction of the country MORE than they doubt politicians, who are professionals in the field.
It doesn't make any sense. And why the hell would you veto a paper trail unless you KNEW you would have an unfair advantage? It doesn't make any sense.
I'll say it again: It doesn't make any sense.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Teaching in Ivy League Schools? UPenn Professor?
e k/
Sorry, but you're going to have to come up with better sources than that, because they DEFINE tin-foil hatters. Most Professors at universities are so far to the left they can't see straight.
No diversity of THOUGHT in those universities, or there would be a balance between conservatists and lefists. But there's not. It's swung so far to the left, they actively keep out anyone that disagrees with them. So much for open-mindedness and diversity.
Again, you switch the subject from the original election to the Ukraine. Stick on the subject.
Btw, you should read this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6408569/site/newswe
Bottom line: You're wrong, stick on the original subject and use unbiased sources. Bush won. Deal.
It's the same subject... voter fraud. Not letting you spin your way out of that. Voter fraud is voter fraud is voter fraud. Exit polls are exit polls are exit polls. You say exit polls prove voter fraud, then you say exit polls prove voter fraud. PERIOD.
Yeah... all those "liberals" like David Drier, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Brent Scowcroft, Chuck Hagel, and John McCain say exit polls prove voter fraud. Try again.
What you're ignoring is that the exit polls here in the US were skewed badly, with something like 58% of those polled being women, instead of the actual percentage of those that voted. If you'd listened to the news that night, they had figured that out by about 4:30 pm. The original "news" came out at 2pm.
Plus you're ignoring that: 1) Not everyone that voted takes an exit poll, 2) Some people actually seek out exit pollers, and 3) Those people were extremely partisan.
I know you'd dearly love to be the person that "proved" that the exit polls were really the truth, instead of the actual vote. That's not what happened, no matter how much you wish it did. You see, here in reality land, we use the actual vote, not exit polls.
If the situation were reversed, and Bush had been ahead in those polls, you wouldn't be arguing about exit polls.