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Senators Clinton and Kerry Submit Open Voting Bill
An anonymous reader writes "DailyKos is reporting that a group of senators and representatives including Hillary Clinton, John Kerrry, and Tubbs Jones, have proposed an 'open-source' voting bill. This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many of the problems in the last election. Notably, it requires paper receipts, and that the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public. " Commentary on the bill available at the Miami Herald.
Is it just me, or do all politics lately revolve around this same theme?
;)
Corporate lobbies push for proprietary voting machines, the public interest is for open-source voting machines.
Corporate lobbies want extensions to patent laws, public interest is to reasonably limit patent protections.
Corpate lobbies want to DRM everything with legal enforcement, public interest is to have fair use.
The more explanations I hear as to why corporate lobbying is a necessary evil, the more convinced I become of how much of a negative influence they are having on our society.
...but then, on slashdot we're probably all just hopeless libertarians anyway
This can seriously only help.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
Will wonders never cease?
Something I agree with Kerry & Clinton on?
I don't read AC A human right
...scarily like a good idea. It'll be interesting to see how far this can get, and how long before the inevitable corportate opposition to this begins to mount. I can already see Diebold rallying their forces...
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Why should the manual count paper of paper ballots be the official recount. Why would there be a recount of a machine tabulated vote? Does someone think the machine miscounted? And why why why do people keep thinking that a hand count done by humans would be more accurate than a machine count?
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
for the love of god, please please please let this happen. just this once let a good bill pass.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
... We are pleased to present John Kerrry!!!
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
Bills have already been introduced to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA)[2]. 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 major 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.
[1] In fairness, this bill does have a couple of minor differences: it proposes that election day be a federal holiday, and makes doing things that liberals would like to make people believe are routine and widespread, like intimidating minorities and passing out fliers with incorrect voting dates, a felony. It also prohibits executives at voting vendors from being politically active, likely to pander to the people who think Diebold's CEO stole the election for Bush, completely ignoring the impossibility of actually executing on such an allegation statewide. In short, a shameless pandering publicity stunt, which ignores the completely legitimate bills already proposed two years ago above by respected members of Congress that would have addressed the two very topics discussed by Kos and noted in the article summary (namely receipts and open source).
[2] Before anyone decries HAVA: 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 progra
The article indicates that Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are the primary proponents of this bill - though I'm sure Kerry also supports it.
The coolest voice ever.
This won't happen. For one, it makes too much sense. But, the biggest reason why it won't happen is because the government has been bought and the owners like what they have.
"it requires paper receipts, and that the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public."
Since hackers want to break into the system, giving them the source makes their job a lot easier. No one else has any real incentive to atually analyse the code necessary, so this would be a win for the hackers (quit using the term cracker, BTW. It's annoying the way people try to change the definition of terms)
This works like Firefox, right? So I can put while (1) personX.votes++; in there?
Man, the type-
setting of that
bill is aw-
ful. Do all
bills have stu-
pid margin
sizes?
Two TWO YEAR OLD BILLS that have already been introduced in the House and Senate would do JUST THIS, namely, require permanent, voter verified receipts and open source all code on e-voting machines. See my post here.
Also, Diebold already has the capability to add paper receipts, WHICH WERE NOT REQUIRED UNDER HAVA, to all of its e-voting deployments. They're just a contractor. They'll build and deploy whatever local governments will buy. But if you're one of those people who thinks that Diebold, a multi-thousand person corporation that prides itself on reliable customer interface systems, is literally conspiring to rig US elections on the basis of offhanded campaign quotes in the context of GOP fundraising by Diebold's CEO, however inappropriate they were, then I suppose none of what I just said will matter to you.
The prevailing sentiment on Slashdot is anti-big-business, anti-Republican, and especially anti-Bush, so it's not altogether surprising that a Slashdotter would support something on the Democratic side of things, particularly something that purports to ensure proper vote tallying amid questions of election legitimacy, machine tampering, cover-ups, et cetera.
How can it be proprietary voting machines?
it's like
Votes counted
and do some small math?
it's not exactly difficult.
"Is that a zero or a one, I think they meant to vote THIS way"
I agree. A paper ballot recount should only be necessary is there is evidence the electronic data has been compromised.
Vote for Pedro
Basic take being, why should the system be fixed if it isn't broken? Assumption being, they like the results they got the last time, so the system is not broken.
feh
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Yes, I agree that there should be a paper receipt. I think that there should also be an identical paper receipt that drops into a locked box at the time of voting to provide a test of the accuracy of the electronic tabulations. This duplicate copy would be shown to the voter to compare to their copy and the vote would only be recorded when the voter was satisfied that they agreed.
I don't agree that all of the source code should be made public. What a great way to invite hackers to find a way to commit fraud. The source code should be made available to a committee with representation from each of the parties involved in the election so that they can verify its fairness.
It seems like ex-presidents are invariably more socially-concious than acting presidents. I guess it's because they can get away with it, whereas an acting president is still under the thumb of the big lobbyists.
jesus christ, slashdot has low standards.
You mean the editors posting a story about MS AntiSpyware and Firefox that anyone could immediately could see was bogus didn't tip you off?
"Paper records of electronic voting:" Good, as long as voters can't prove to somebody else who they voted for. That would facilitate vote buying.
"Election-day registration": Need to read the bill. If volounteer (partisan) groups get to haphazardly register people at the polls, that's a bad thing. Registrations should be in order some weeks before the elections.
"Election Day as a national holiday.": Good. Productivity could go down, but it could increase turn-out and the importance of the election in people's minds.
"Restoration of voting rights for former felons": Not sure. Is a felon that has served its sentence entitled to the same rights as others?
"the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public." Definately good. The many-eyeballs approach to security validation is perfect for this case, since it's an application with such a huge number of interested parties.
Now, how about non-citizens voting and proof of identification? Anything on that?
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
These bills, and frankly this new bill as well, would REQUIRE it, therefore requiring local municipalities to do what they need to do to deploy it. And if you then ask, well, why didn't they require it, as I said, it was likely simply literally overlooked during the creation of HAVA, which was designed to make voting FAIR for the disenfranchised areas that were so bitched about in 2000. The e-voting vendors thought they were deploying reliable systems. These are people who make ATMs and baking systems, for fuck's sake. Just because they're proprietary doesn't mean that every single thing that happens with them is some conspiracy to help Republicans steal elections.
It's pretty sad, isn't it, when the submitter won't even RTFA.
Pretty soon I'll be so desensitized to sensationalistic journalism and a lack of fact-checking that I won't notice it even when it happens in commercial news outlets!
Quite often, the unions make a common interest with their corporate employers. For example, protectionism and trade barriers that the US steel industry wanted, also benefited the unions.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Free speach indeed; I guess peer censorship is OK as long as only the "wrong" ideas are censored.
I now open this forum up to suggestions.
You are a moron.
Machines are not mythical flawless divinities sent from God to preside over the affairs of men. They are simple beast, of men, and their primary attributes are speed when specialized, and a kind of rote reliability. This doesn't mean they don't make mistakes, it means they make the same mistakes, until a human intervenes. And while it might be very simple for a commodity hardware to evaluate cells in an excel spreedsheet, that's not what we're talking about because that's not how we register votes. There are some parts of the process machines do well, such as reading nearly ideally marked ballots in good condition provided by humans, or adding up the resulting numbers. But there are parts humans do much better. Such as reading ballots that haven't been ideally marked or cared for. Finding ballots that other humans forgot to feed the machine. Noting when the machine grabs more than one ballot at a time. And others.
While it is difficult for humans to individually match a machine in raw adding ability, we in our infinite cleverness can none the less come up with effective counting strategies that match our digital bretheren in accuracy. These are of course labor intensive and thus expensive.
There are many things that contribute their error bars to the result of any recount. That you fail to see this isn't a failing of the system, it's a failing of your imagination.
Lastly, the paper recipts potentially give The People a way to audit the system. And a system with a million auditors with diametrically opposed viewpoints is a system that will quickly become trustworthy.
what possible reason can they have for such opposition; or whether, what reason that does not mark them as irredeemably evil?
Sheer laziness is always a reason, though not a justifiable one, for resisting any change to the status quo. "What we have now is good enough!"
Hardware can have flaws, too, either accidental or intentional. Do we as citizens get the right to inspect the hardware, too, or at least some citizen watchdog groups? IMO, hardware stuff is much more sinister since it would be next to impossible to detect.
I've been wondering something about voting machines for a while - why are there so many complications to them? I've heard a lot of mention of security threats, inaccuracies, and so forth, but why is the program any more complicated than just storing a hash table of votes that occurred? It just seems like a really simple app, I don't get how there can be so many problems with it.
Former Democracy Known As the United States of America
More unfunded mandates with no regard to the cost to local communities. And a new federal holiday.
I honestly fail to see the reason, that convicted felons shouldn't be allowed to vote. If a convicted fellon has served his/her time, his debt to society has been paid, and there should be no further reason to punish him.
There is also the situation, that a person is convicted on a crime, that he doesn't think is a crime, but currently is a crime by law. Thus this convicted felon is no longer able to try to change the laws, by excercising politicl power.
So punishing a fellon even after he/she has paid his debt to society, is in my opinion immoral and revengefull, and won't allow a criminal to integrate properly into society again.
What the heck are you talking about?
They should have called it
.....
"The No Vote Left Behind Act"
That'd satisfy the need the Administration has to name things using code words, like
"Help America Vote" - help citizens vote Right
"Can Spam" - yes, legally, now you can
"No Vote Left Behind" - leave the "No" votes behind, tally the "Yes" votes
On the one hand, it's distressing that this bill continues the recent trend of naming laws in such a manner as to automatically cast aspersions on the honor of anyone who opposes them. I mean, the public should (rightly) be worried if their elected legislators are opposed to Counting Every Vote. But if there was a genuine flaw in the wording of the bill, and a politician voted against it because of this, his or her opponents could certainly spin this act in a dishonest - but politically effective - manner.
But on the other hand, it's nice to see an apparently benign example of this phenomenon. By all acounts this bill is a Good Thing, entirely apart from partisan consideration, so our legislators should feel political pressure to vote for it. Contrast with the PATRIOT Act, for example, or the watered-down Help America Vote Act...
Varies by state as is.
Imagine that.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Bigger problem: somebody gets to be listed first on the ballot. Automatically, he gets more votes. California slightly fixes this, with per-county variation. It would be better to print ballots as needed, with randomized candidate order.
Heck, it is statistically valid to give out blank ballots, as long as every voter has an equal chance of receiving such a ballot. We could have 1-question true-false ballots: "do you think that $(PERSON) would be a good choice for $(OFFICE)?" That would sure speed things up.
If a person is convicted of a felony that they feel should not be illegal, or if they are wrongfully convicted of a felony, shouldn't they have the right to fight future injustice at the ballot box?
If a copyright infringement conviction were to make it impossible for you to vote, who will stop DMCA++?
Why is this listed under "Censorship"? What's being censored? I think it would be closer to "Your Rights Online", or politics, or whatever.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
the only real problem with last years election is that for most of /.ers, the wrong guy won. the us civil rights commission did two exhaustive studies of florida. guess what? nothing. no fraud, no intimidation, no disenfranchisement. sorry go home. the press did a thorough recount of the ballots. every scenario. guess what. bush still wins. if you want the links, i'll find them, but we're finding voter reg. fraud in ohio, but oops, they'er democratic. and washington state. please. dead people voting, "discovered" ballots, 500 people registered at the same address. recounts until the democrat wins.
i'm honestly taking sides, because i think there's going to be an amount of chicanery on both sides. but if this is your kool-aid, and you focus on voting problems, a system which has served us for 200 years, then you're living in la la land. the 1960 election was won by fraud. nixon didn't run around the country for years claiming he was robbed, etc. if you're unhappy, how about volunteering next time, as the democrats had to pay campaign workers, while the republicans had 1 million volunteers. oh, and lastly, if you're hanging out at kos, oh nevermind...
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Here is another place to read about this: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=118
The issue is not felons per se, or any kind of deep, logical paradigm about the disenfranchised ex-cons and illegal immigrants. It's about self-interest: Democrats will propose any change to voting laws so long as it helps them. Immigrants, poor, hispanics, and blacks (and like it or not, felons disproportionately fall into the last three categories) are more likely to vote Democratic, so naturally Democrats want them to vote more. Conversely, since Republicans own most voting machines, they will do anything to oppose open voting, at least in part because it constitutes a monetary investment, and tacitly because there's at least a possibility they could fix the election.
I guess you think election fraud is a recent event?
What someone is bashing our Empress, Mrs. Clinton?! Mod Down! Mod DOWN! This man has a good point. I find two problems with the proposed bill. One is mentioned above: The system simply cannot handle the voting public anymore. As the country with the second largest voting public in the world (I don't know how India does their's), there are simply too many voters, too many different systems, too many everything to expect that you can just fix everything with a simple bill. The logistics of implementing a nationwide voting reform are staggering, not mentioning the budget that would be required. This would bring me to the second point: Elections are in the hands of the states. Period. It is not in the federal government's jurisdiction to say how a state should run an election. The only constitutional clause pertaining to this states simply that states cannot prevent citizens from voting. How they vote, who is on the ballot, when they vote - all that is up to the state. Personally, I strongly oppose anything that takes power from the hands of local, easily monitored politics and moves it hundreds of miles away to Washington.
For the record and all, it was Boxer, Clinton, and Stephanie Tubbs Jones. She may only be a representative (and not a Senator), but she deserves to have her name written properly and fully.
For the interested, she's the Representative from the 11th District of Ohio - which seems to include most of Cleveland, and some of its suburbs. She was also the Rep. who (with Boxer) officially objected to the counting of the ballots from Ohio.
Cue The Sun...
Although I support open source voting machines and paper receipts and such, I don't like those issues being packaged with the restoration of voting rights to felons. I believe the open-source voting should be debated (and hopefully approved) on its own.
Packaging the issues together allows the Democrats to win either way this goes, though. If the Republicans in Congress oppose it because of the felon-voting issue, Democrats can still claim that Republicans "opposed a bill guaranteeing open voting standards."
Get rid of the electoral college, the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primaries, and force advertising to be factually correct. Then maybe, just maybe, there'll be a reasonable candidate.
+99999 most excellently true cinpiracy theory
Ok... we have electronic voting... But NOW we're going to pass bills to avoid issues, and make sure there is a "HARD COPY" also made at the same time. Umm.. ok. On top of that, we're going to be concerned that the vote was counted correct?
What's wrong with people today?
Just give them a god-damned old fashioned piece of paper... tell them to color in the circle, check the box, whatever... and then put it in the machine.
WOW... there's not a HARD COPY, and we're using the same standard reliable machines that we've always used, and no one has complained about THOSE counting the votes wrong... they're not open source software or hardware... but hey... those are ok.
We're re-inventing the wheel... and forcing the same outcome. Instead of pushing a button... and then having it spit out a piece of paper.. most places get the paper first, and then put it in the machine.
Dozen of one, 2 1/2 dozen of the other... Who's winning here?? The freaking company that is making and forcing these counties to buy the hardware and software... Then we have 90 year old ladies running the place... and we wonder why the machines don't work?
I say screw these voting machines. If people are always going to wonder if their vote was "counted" (what a stupid saying really...) then stop using them.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
.. is, then, a corporate lobby which pushes for the end of all corporate lobbying.
...)
that'll screw 'em!
(oh, btw, it should be a publically traded corporation
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many of the problems in the last election...
As much as I'd like to believe it was a conspiracy that cost us the election, I just see too many redneck wackos with their gun racks and SUVs and 'W the president' stickers to believe that there isn't a very large portion of this country that willingly supports devolving back to the horse and buggy age as quickly as possible.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
As for paper ballots, the idea is good, but will it really work well in practice? The machines will have to be able to void individual paper ballots if the voter, looking through the viewplate, realizes he didn't vote the right way. All this paper handling adds a lot of mechanical complexity to the machine, making breakdowns more likely.
Here's the text of the bill calling for programmers to have background checks (p. 10):
> Again, go ahead and argue with me if you want; I won't even bother reading it.
And we have to endure reading you? You see this is one of those things that bothers me about the debates these days. Instead of trying to find a compromise we are in a screaming match on who can scream loudest WITHOUT listening to the other person.
So here I go rambling with my own off-topic ideas....
There is a public interest, and often some people represent the public interest. So the original poster is probably not that far off the mark
Now regarding patents...
>>> I'm not going to get into yet another stupid argument over them, but I will state my opinion: Patents are good things.
Gee, you scream "I am not going to listen to you and I am going to give my opion".
Likewise I will do the same and ramble my thoughts. Patents are legal monopolies that protect a unique idea. Sounds good, but it misses the obvious point, there are not that many unique ideas as there are patents granted! Humanity is not unique! We are only as smart as predecessors! So how can you patent something where the basis was created by somebody else? As a patent holder will you give those people who provided you with the knowledge money? My point is nobody lives in a vaccum.
Lets consider the following perspective, in a world of globalization there will be multiple people that will come up with the same idea. It is because our evolutionary nature of ideas. Yet one can get a patent and the other not! Why not? They both came to the same idea and yet one is considered a copy cat! Ooops, sorry beep wrong answer.
Patents do not protect markets because if you look at some of the most competitive and richest markets they HAVE NO protection from patents. Examples include, cars, software (before the scams), food receipes (cooking, etc), movies, music, etc. Patents cause more problems than they are worth.
I do fully endorse copyright, however with less length. My thinking is along the lines, life of creator + 15 years. I agree with DRM, but on an optional basis. DRM should not be shoved down our throats.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I hate this idea. People who can't make the minimal effort it takes to vote don't deserve a new holiday. As a matter of fact, I believe people so irresponsible not to vote will merely be partying the night before their new holiday, and would be less likely to show.
I swear that including OpenSource in the Bill is more because it is just a new buzzword than anything else. I do not want to discuss the matter of more secure/less secure, because that is not the issue here; the issue is the safety of the vote results.
I think that the main threat to an electoral process will come from the company providing the service (as the single point of failure); and they can just make all of the code completely Open Source and just load in the machines another compiled, thus making the complete Open Source useless.
The big issue in this Bill is remind that votes should be verifiable against mistakes and manipulations and, hence, a receipt should be print to:
a) Asure all the people that the results are correct, and hence there is no room for complaining, and
b) Asure all the people that the results are correct and so the new elected officials meet all the moral requirements to be obeyed (as long as the law stablishes).
The Open Source "buzzword" is more harmful than anything, because a Bill with a simple objective now has two and this can distract people (what happens if the Congress do accept that the software is Open Source but does not require the receipts to be prompt? A minor gain for a major loss).
Why can't
Those two bills have been stuck in committees for almost two years now.
No wonder this new bill is being proposed--it will either force decisions on those two bills, assuming they haven't been quietly ignored, or it will revive debate on these issues.
In fairness, this bill does have a couple of minor differences: it proposes that election day be a federal holiday, and makes doing things that liberals would like to make people believe are routine and widespread, like intimidating minorities and passing out fliers with incorrect voting dates, a felony.
Considering that this has been documented, and that even one incident is more than enough, I find your lack of enthusiasm disturbing. I guess you just can't get over your hate of "liberals".
It also prohibits executives at voting vendors from being politically active, likely to pander to the people who think Diebold's CEO stole the election for Bush, completely ignoring the impossibility of actually executing on such an allegation statewide.
Impossibility.
Impossibility.
Can you be reasonably sure that potential tampering is difficult enough to make this claim?
In Canada, electoral officials must be politically neutral. They effectively give up the right to engage in political action for the sake of ensuring the process is run in a fair, unbiased fashion. Even then, each party can designate poll observers.
You seem to be blinded by your hatred of anyone (whom you consider "liberal"--far to the right of what anyone in the rest of the world would consider "liberal" under the US definition) that questions the legitimacy of the 2000 and 2004 elections, even when those concerns are supported by documented evidence and indications of clear bias on the part of individuals who have great influence over the technology used to run those elections.
There is always some fraud in the election, on both sides of the bench, but I do feel the need to point something out.
I know it might sound like B.S., being on the internet and such, and it's not my story so I want to keep the details obscure for now, but during the election, a friend of mine was in Ohio volunteering for the DNC. His job was to follow the votes from the polling place to a non-partisan truck, that would bring them to be counted. The man carrying the votes was hostile to him, and it was late at night (because of all the delays) but he nonetheless went with him, even though he was a bit nervous.
Eventually, the man he was following brought all of the votes to a Bush '04 campaign truck, and put them inside! According to the rules, it was supposed to be a neutral truck (obviously). Well, he got a picture of the situation, and I think it might appear in a publication soon.
I wonder, if they do things so openly, how much the electronic voting machines were messed with? We all know that they are not nearly secure (with updates being sent without being checked, etc.), and we've all heard the stories about people voting all for the Democratic ticket, only to see their receipts showing a vote for Bush.
Anyway, I don't think there was widescale corruption just by the Republicans. I'm sure both sides are equally guilty. And personally, I think Bush is doing much better this term, but still a little scary.
This idea seems like a good one, it will help against Republican and Democratic corruption.
The article and the press release doesn't even mention Kerry. They talk about a Boxer and Clinton bill. Who's editing this shit?
Will wonders never cease? Something I agree with Kerry & Clinton on?
... bridges that might make those leaders obsolete.
You (understandably) got modded +Funny.
But you've touched on a completely serious issue -- the politics of finding common ground.
Our current political circus is built on the lawyer/contention model -- either I'm totally for you, or I'm totally against you. My party right or wrong, your party be damned. A world of Total Contention.
But Total Contention is an illusion. Life isn't like that. Real people aren't always wrong, aren't always the enemy. I vote for X, that doesn't make Y a total idiot. It only seems like Y is a total idiot, because the X party has a vested interest in Total Contention.
Too many leaders feed us the Total Contention bullshit, because Total Contention keeps us distracted, keeps us from thinking clearly, keeps us from building bridges to each other
Harry Tuttle put it well: Listen, kid, we're all in it together.
I'm not talking about a Sixties love-fest here. We do need to debate issues. We do need to promote the views we cherish, and challenge the views we hate.
But if we're going to get past Total Contention -- get past the politics of hate -- get past all of that "Us Versus Them" crap -- if we're going to achieve honest intelligent debate, if we're going to find some kind of common ground where we can live on this ball of mud without hating each other to death -- then we've got to learn to listen to each other and learn from each other.
-kgj
-kgj
Also, the manufacturer is required to do a background check on all contributers, so that rules out an open source development model.
Mandatory recount of paper ballots is required at 2% of precincts (chosen randomly). This is an improvement, but in my opinion, too low. 98% too low. The electronic count should be used to satisfy those who don't want to wait two weeks to find out who won, but electronic counts should never be considered trustworthy by themselves.
He said it in a fund-raising letter. Diebold systems are incredibly easy to hack, and almost certainly helped in the voting irregularities in the 2004 election.
To top it off, a highly partisan republican, Kenneth Blackwell, managed the votes in Ohio and has been uncooperative in investigations.
This says nothing of the exit poll discrepancies...
Or maybe MoveOn.org?
Or the NAACP? (Do they support candidates?)
Or the Sierra Club?
Or the NEA? The Teamsters? The AFL-CIO?
Why only ban "corporate" money?
You forgot the other main segment of the populace in which Democrats almost always win out: people with Ph.Ds and college students.
Why bother even voting when the electoral college votes are the only votes that determine the presidency?
We are no longer in the time where it took weeks for news to travel 1000 miles or that only the rich and educated could read. It's time to get rid of the antiquated system we call the Electoral College and allow the popular vote to determine the presidency.
With electronic voting machines it would be even easier than with paper ballots to count a popular vote.
Many states have state ID cards that can be issued to non-driver's license holders for identification. Have the states issue drivers licenses and ID Cards with smart chips that contain a unique identifier encrypted within that is used for the express purpose of authenticating voters.
Example: A voter shows up to vote, gives their ID to the volunteer who inserts it in a card reader, verifies the name on the chip with the name on the face of the ID along with the user's picture and allows the voter entrance to an electronic voting booth. Voter verified, vote verified, vote counted, done.
What possible reason could I, as a Libertarian election lawyer, have for opposing the bill?
Well, how about the part about making 'deceptive' statements about the election a felony?
I blogged about this 2/18/05 ballots.blogspot.com.
Rick Hasen's www.electionlawblog.org is a good place to track these issues.
If you are very familiar with how Senator Clinton works, a "deceptive" statement is one she doesn't agree with.
I suspect, and this is only a suspicion, that the bill is an unconstitutional violation of free speech and voting rights. As a person who has sworn to uphold the constitution, I couldn't go along with that. Does that make me evil?
Of course, the centers for vote fraud in this country all tend to vote heavily Democratic....
would the democrats let it go, you lost! they are being such sore losers. while i agree that this is a good law, it just seems that it is being pushed to infer that Dubya didn't win. Have you seen tha map, looks mighty red to me.
It was closer than Ohio, and just google "Wisconsin voter fraud" to see what's going on there.
And Kerry won Wisconsin.
And how about the Washington Governor's race? Find more Dem votes in King County for each new recount until the Dem wins.
Cut the crap: there's a real reason Democrats consistently block requirements that voters have to ID themselves, and you can see that in Wisconsin and Washington state.
...if it passes. As I see it, voting is something that needs to be taken more seriously in this country, and this bill would be a decent step forward. I like the fact there would be criminal penalties for interfering with an election, and I like the hardware and software standards that would be applied.
Personally I don't see why both sides of the fence aren't jumping to support this. The Dems want it in place to reduce the number of fubar'ed elections and the Reps should want it so when the next election comes around they can actually prove they won. There would be more work, and it isn't a magic solution to the problems (both reasons why it might not pass), but it is a good start.
An anonymous reader writes "DailyKos is reporting that a group of senators and representatives including Hillary Clinton, John Kerrry, and Tubbs Jones, have proposed an 'open-source' voting bill. This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many of the problems in the last election."
Which problems of the last election? That every single media entity couldn't talk us into voting for a guy who can't make up his mind, or that the Democrats lost in general?
I can't remember the last time so many media people pushed so hard to support such a weak opponent. I was ashamed for the Democrats; they've fielded so many, much better candidates. This guy took indecisiveness to an art form. Does anyone, even today know what he stood for? Yet movies, newspaper comics, standup comics, SNL, made-for-tv movies, New York Times, street vendors, taxi drivers, and just about everything but Apple Jacks boxes were turned into lobbying devices. And Bush still won. It all seems kinda hollow, coming from the Democrats.
No, wait; I can remember. Regan versus Mondale. Regan was an idiot of course, a dottering old fool who woke up one morning, reached for the 'nurse' button and missed, hitting the 'nuke' button instead. The entire world exploded in a fireball that rocked the solar system. Liberals all over the world were unsurpised.
Where are the _real_ democrats, those that had ideas and advanced them? This time it was all "we hate Bush". That's no platform!
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
The parent post destroys the basis of daveschroeder's argument--that liberals are just reinventing the wheel and making noise about it. The last wheel died in committee, and the senators and representative are reviving the idea with added safeguards.
dave never answers why the bills weren't passed before the 2004 elections, though I bet he'll find some way to blame liberals.
Most of the stuff in these bills are already in the pipe, and are being debated on in congress (i.e. the open voting systems, ect.)
The rest is partisan stuff, and most of the liberals on these boards know it.
The first one is the holiday for voting day, sure it sounds good in concept but if you peel the layers away you will find it is nothing but a partisan attempt to try to get more votes for democrats. Who are the only people who are guaranteed to get such a holiday off? Most people who are non-union or non-government workers work most of the minor holidays, so the only group that is guaranteed to benefit from this holiday are the democrats two largest voting blocks. Companies who actually have to make money, cannot afford to pay their people for yet another day off.
Second is the convicted felon issue, which is, and should remain a state issue. Some states even allow convicted felons to vote once they have served their time. However if you peel the layers away again, you will notice that pretty much every poll that has been taken has shown that convicted felons overwhelmingly vote for democrat.
This bill has nothing to due with counting every vote, or anything of the sorts. Its an attempt by the democrats, who have been unable to win with the current rules, to change the election system so it is rigged in their favor.
Instead of counting every vote, why not count every legitimate vote. Too many dead people voting for Dems these days.
What you are saying is absolutly correct, if the only thing that is to be taken into consideration is the correctness of each vote as it is cast. The essential safeguard that having access to the source code of the machine protects against, and which paper ballots does not (unless there is a recount based ONLY on the paper ballots) is the mallicious injection of votes into the system by an outside souce. If you are going to prevent this, you must either have manditory recounts of all votes (difficult) or have certification of the integrity of the machine at the time of the vote (hard, but not impossible). This is why, for example, most voting machines have some sort of tamper proof seal on them. You WOULD phsyically check that each machine matches the published source code before you set it out, then you would seal all inputs on the machine (remove drives, plug ports) put a paper seal on the box, and set it up. Not easy, but do-able.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
I, for one, am extraordinarily disappointed with the lack of quality of trolls in this modern day and age. I remember when a decent troll would satisfy my cravings for ignorance. But recently, the quantity of good trolls has been steadily decreasing.
Is someone dumping raw sewage over the side of your bridge? Come one people, you have to _make an effort_
Defenestrate Windows...
Have a nice day.
> the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public.
Heh... requiring object code to be readable by the public, now there's a whole new challenge. Let's add another three years to high school and cut english altogether. Either that or come up with turing complete object code that was also gramatically correct. And, say, in rhyming iambic pentameter for fun.The only reason corporations have power is that they have lots of money. The only reason lots of money is important is that a trained monkey with lots of money will win over Abe Lincoln with a stack of fliers in the back of a Honda Insight.
Now, if you had a well-informed populous with sharp critical-thinking skills this wouldn't be the case. But that's not what we have and it isn't.
So, the only way to get corporations out of politics is to teach children how to reason. Good luck.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The issue of election integrity is bigger than the Kerry Bush race. For the first time in the history of this democracy, we are trusting electronic tabulating machines to count votes in a presidential race. Machines which reknown computer scientists and cryptologists have proven to be insecure and untrustworthy.
In addition to being insecure and untrustworthy these machines left no "paper trail", no way of verifying the machine's count in a recount. When you have no paper trail, the only tool to investigate the integrity of a machine count is that of statistics, as Berkeley researchers were forced to rely upon when they concluded that voting irregularities lead them to believe 260,000 votes were invalidly awarded to Bush. In fact when 4,258 votes were awarded by a Diebold machine to Bush in Franklin County, Ohio we only knew that result had to be wrong because only 638 voters had casted ballots. Unfortunately this wasn't an isolated event as Diebold has stirred a string of such voting irregularities. According to Bob Fitrakis:
Which leads us to question the integrity of the election especially when the exit polls were so clearly in favor of Kerry.
The CEO of Diebold has made no attempt to hide his support for Bush. Ironically, he has publically stated that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year". Later he stated it was a mistake to have said that, he meant it as an American, not as the CEO of a corporation that was contracted to count votes in Ohio. The CEO however isn't the only one to be painted with a big brush of suspicious, as at least five convicted felons secured management positions in his company. One of which served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."
In my response I have analyzed the integrity of the Ohio election through the prisim of electronic voting, others have made other arguments regarding why they think an investigation is warranted as I can assure you the problems with Diebold is not limited to Ohio nor is electronic voting the only "irregularity" in Ohio [1] [2]
For instance, I am strongly opposed to this "paper receipts" idea. The reason why current election law prohibits anybody from taking anything away from a polling place that can be used to determine how that person voted is to prevent vote coercion. "Vote for John Smith or I'll break your kneecaps," says the hired goon. When you come out of the polling place he demands to see your receipt. No receipt, no way to coerce voters.
So that's why you use secure receipts. Known problem, known solution, just waiting for will and implementation.
You describe a problem with a simplistic implementation of receipts and then proceed to blast the entire concept. Actually, that's pretty close to how people on the other side of the DRM issue from you feel - the current implementations are poor and onerous - when they're not they'll be OK with it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Since the current administration's rise to power was and is only possible due to massive election fraud and math tricks, this bill stands no chance to hell.
Or to say it with the words of Stalin: As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?
I'll donate $1000 to the cause if both John Kerry and Hillary Clinton can explain what source code and object code are.
I intentionally linked to a couple of legitimate sites because I figured you'd bash any with a liberal bias. I didn't say the election was stolen. I did however indicate that there were irregularities for which there is suspicious involvement of partisan officials in power, similar to Katherine Harris' bullshit in 2000. John Conyers is a legitimately elected congressman who felt these irregularities were worth investigating. He is obviously not the only one.
Notice I link to nonpartisan websites there (with the exception of rawprint, which has a scanned copy of an offical letter). Besides, even republicans should be outraged at Blackwell's lack of co-operation.
Voting should not be made easy. A person who will only vote if the effort involved is near-zero will not take the trouble to find out the nature of the issues and the quality of the candidates. To the extent that he does understand the issues he will vote to get things at no expense to himself: he will vote for a kleptocracy.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The bills died in committee two years ago, as pointed out in another thread. Don't give this misleading axe-grinding undeserved recognition.
My question is... why is a felon forced to support the government (via taxes) and draw on its benefits (libraries, highways, etc.) and yet not allowed to dictate its form (through voting)?
In all, whatever logic there is for this has so far alluded me, unless it is simply supposed to be an overwhelming dis-incentive, like the death penalty. And considering all the things that are felonious, I wonder if its really that smart an idea, or if helps deter at all.
Looks good for your age..
They're already illegal.
The problem isn't contributions; it's that it costs so damn much to run a serious campaign and candidates have to spend 12 hours a day raising money instead of being out campaigning. Why does it cost so much? TV ads!
We need to reduce the cost of political ads on *our* public airwaves.
First time in a long time that I can agree wholeheartedly with Senators Clinton and Kerry! What's next, will Bill Gates come out in favor of the GPL?
Are we going to require public disclosure of the source code for the applications, compilers, libraries, operating system, device drivers, VHDL for all of the chips, CAD/CAE tools? How transparent do you want it to be?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Indeed, an example where an actual communist party was elected (if you people out there think that Stalin represented actual marxism/communism, then I'm not sure I can break through that ignorance) and was deposed by forces quite decidedly undemocratic. (Anyone sketchy on the facts can brush up on them somplace like wikipedia). The sad truth is, the factions and people that believed in Communism as an actual expression of what is best for the people, well, they were often put down by heavy-handed measures on the parts of their opponents. The ones that espoused the ideology but really were just in it for power, those were the successful ones (and when they weren't, afterwards they were taken care of by those that were; Trotsky actually believed in what the Soviets claimed to, but Stalin, in it only for himself and unencumbered by any ideology otherwise, easily ousted Trotsky).
Note, also, the times that communists have been cheated out of elections; in the Weimar Republic in germany, near the end, both the Nazis and the Communists were making significant gains in the elections. The Nazis spread fear about the Communists, burned down the Reichtag building and blamed it on communists, and just generally used underhanded methods to manipulate people into handing power over to them.
And sometimes communists (or movements that started out as communist, but later became just power hungry regimes, a common story with revolutions in general, the French Revolution being a shining example of good intentions gone bad) had no option of democratic elections, because there were none in the country in question. So the fact that few communists have been elected worldwide is not that much of a strike against them; the number of examples when fundamentally different systems were elected to power are few as is, it's hardly a show of superiority when the status quo is re-asserted.
Although, to go to the literal wording of the grandparent: name a communist that was elected in a real election. Well, that isn't very hard at all, there are even communists elected at this very moment around the world, maybe not as the ruling governments, but if you're looking just at communists that have been elected in real elections you don't have to look very far. I searched for about half a second and already came up with some evidence of communist activity and success in the democratic process.
Methinks the grandparent is perhaps a tad irrationally biased, to make such blanket statements.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
By the way, I have read the Mitofsky-Edison report to which I assume you are referring regarding the exit polls. I do find it interesting that there are other statisticians who conclude differently.
This is good news! Now if the same senators would only be interested in making sure that people who vote are legal citizens and registered to vote we might be on our way to open and 'fair' elections....
Mary's ballot asks if she thinks Nader is better than Bush. Lisa's ballot asks if Kerry is unfit for office. Martha's ballot asks (only) if marriage should be defined as the exclusive union of one man and one woman, unbreakable except via death. Sue's ballot asks if Nader is worse than Kerry.
Questions are asked in both positive and negative forms. When more than 2 choices are available, every pairing of candidates is equally likely to be asked about.
Besides making voting fast, this keeps most people from gaming the system. While it is provable that all voting systems are susceptable to gaming, the psychology makes a difference.
S.330 and H.R.704 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005.
Why splinter support for this bill - the most important part of which mandates a permanent, voter-verifiable paper trail - with partisan pandering about voter intimidation (which is ALREADY illegal) and rhetoric that echoes of conspiracies about Diebold's CEO?
At first glance, this proposal is so partisan that it is dead on arrival. It ignores Republican concerns about the methods Democrats use to manipulate elections. Restoration of voting rights to felons is a state issue, not a federal issue. It mandates "no excuse" absentee ballots, which have proven to be a fertile source of fraudulent votes. It ignores the poor quality of voter registration lists.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version already has 9 cosponsors, and the House version 102.
Why not support these bills?
So let me understand...we lock someone up at our expense, spending large sums of money on guards and physical security, not to mention feeding them, and somehow that pays their debt to us?
As far as I am concerned, the purpose of prison is to prevent continued offending, and hopefully to discourage them from repeating the original crime. It in no way reduces the debt they owe to society and the victims
Now, had you linked to those two bills in the first place while mentioning the two-year-old dead bills as well, you could have avoided a lot of trouble and argument. Instead, you made it seem as if you were trying to attack a decent proposal with a dead one, without mentioning the dead part.
To encourage more citizens to exercise their right to vote, the Count Every Vote Act designates Election Day a federal holiday and requires early voting in each state. The bill also enacts "no-excuse" absentee balloting, enacts fair and uniform voter registration and identification, and requires states to allow citizens to register to vote on Election Day. It also requires the Election Assistance Commission to work with states to reduce wait times for voters at polling places. In addition, the legislation restores voting rights for felons who have repaid their debt to society.
I think these points are at least as important as any other in the bills. First and foremost because it means another paid holiday for the government. But it also allows voters to register on election day which means that thousands of lazy people who wouldn't have registered otherwise will join in!! And I can't think of who I'd rather have deciding the fate of the nation than a bunch of lazy people. Also felons. Not that I think it makes a difference who gets elected.
In all seriousness, I think felons still deserve the right to vote, and making the registration process more convenient is a good thing. Also I get federal holidays off with pay, so that works for me.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
As people are selected, we collect their votes. US Federal Marshalls or Secret Service officers meet the people in person, then take them to vote.
We ask people until 99.9% statistical certainty has been acheived. If the votes are close, we might need to ask 1000 people. In cases of a landslide, the required statistical certainty will be acheived after only a few dozen votes have been collected.
Cool, huh? This would save lots of time and money.
This is one of those types of bills that will be a test of corruption. This should not be partisan, if it is, then that says something about the side that goes against it.
He's Grrreat!
If you have an iterest in this, browse here:r ticle/1970
http://www.uscountvotes.org/
This seems to be based in Utah, possibly the most Bush state in the US. It links to the most detailed and reliable set of articles that I've seen. For a readable statistical critique:
http://tinyurl.com/5eaam
A recent vulgarized account:
A Corrupted Election: Despite what you may have heard, the exit polls were right.
In These Times
"The exit polls themselves are a strong indicator of a corrupted election. Moreover, the exit poll discrepancy must be interpreted in the context of more than 100,000 officially logged reports of irregularities during Election Day 2004. For many Americans, if not most, mass-scale fraud in a U.S. presidential election is an unthinkable possibility. But taken together, the allegations, the subsequently documented irregularities, systematic vulnerabilities, and implausible numbers suggest a coherent story of fraud and deceit."
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/a
Someone please explain to me the purpose of provisional ballots. It seems to me that we've been fine for a long time without them, and they seem ripe for fraud.
I thought it was to assist people who arrive at the wrong polling place. But that seems like a real stretch. At least in Maryland, you don't have to go but a few miles to reach a polling place (nearly every school, public or private, is a polling place). The location is sent to you many months in advance. Plus you can call and verify it ahead of time. It seems more likely to be a way for people to vote numerous times without any real way to track down the duplicates.
Cool. Another "Hillary's out to take over the world and do unspecified horrible things afterward" conspiracy. What the hell is it about her that scares you people so badly?
So the law actually says that any statement she disagrees with is deceptive? 'Cause if it doesn't it doesn't matter one whit what she thinks deceptive means, what matters is what the judges who try cases think it means. And if you look at the current judicial makeup of most of the country (yeah, I know you won't bother) you'll see that the chances that they'll participate in her evil plan in any significant numbers are slim.
I suspect, and this is only a suspicion, that the bill is an unconstitutional violation of free speech and voting rights. As a person who has sworn to uphold the constitution, I couldn't go along with that. Does that make me evil?
Evil? No. Stupid? Quite possibly. As seems to be so common these days with those who would like to fully claim their rights while denying them to everybody else, you've confused your "Constitutional right" to do something with the non-existent "right to do what I please while facing no consequences." If you actually are a lawyer as you claim to be, then you're well aware that you're free to say many, many things whose consequences may include felony convictions; just ask Martha Stewart.
Tell you what, how about I go on television and tell people that if they send me $1000 I'll send them back $10,000 in six months then don't do it? When I find myself facing prison time can I get out from under it by claiming it's an unconstitutional violation of my free speech rights?
Answer left as an exercise for the reader.
S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version has 9 cosponsors and the House version has 102. So the initial post is still 100% valid.
I'm a slashdotting technophile as much as anyone else here, but I can't at this time support the use of voting machines.
It costs about 10 times as much to cost a vote by machine compared to hand counting. We pay an unreasonable premium for election night returns. We could have every vote counted by three separate people and get more trustworthy results the next day. Who do you trust? Do you trust the machine manufacturers or your neighbors in your precincts?
http://bolson.org/cgi-bin/vote_tco
Start Running Better Polls
Unfortunately, the Republicans are in power and they probably figure that most previously convicted felons would vote Democrat. In some states, that could have changed the results of the last two presidential elections. That alone will probably doom this bill.
Yes, one of the prison tasks is to prevent the felon to perpetrate in further crime, but one of the tasks is also to punish the felon in a way, ideally, that is proportionate to the crime. When the time has been served, you have made up for your crime, and thereby you have payed your debt to society.
If you are arguing, that serving prison time doesn't repay your dept to society, then there can only be two ways to punish: Either don't, or capital punisment to all that breaks the law, since they'll never be able to repay their debt and thereby remove the vengeance placed upon them (Which prison in reality is). This is of course out in the edge...
Please note, that i'm not talking about money here, I'm talking about moral debt.
One of the riders on this bill will allow convicted Felons to vote!
This will definitely get vetoed for sure... No way in hell would I support a convicted felon the right to vote. Like it or not Bush will veto this bill.
the quote is FROM a more civilized time, not FOR. although that would imply Linux was a relic of the past...
...then why aren't Clinton, Boxer, and Kerry supporting bills that would do just that?
S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, that would specifically add a permanent, voter-verified paper trail to every vote case, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005. The House version already had 102 cosponsors; the Senate version, 9.
Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like open source and an e-voting vendors' reliability or scruples moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?
In the case you suggest, voter fills out a paper somehow and it is read by a machine, usually the machine reads it "silently" not giving any indication of how it understood the voter's will.
Someone once said:
It's not who votes that counts, It's who count the votes.
Really, how is this different from calling all blacks "stupid niggers" or all Japanese "slanty-eyed bastards"? Maybe it is *you* who are out of step with reality. Ever think of that?
I know an awful lot of people who are anti-big-business, anti-Republican, and anti-Bush, and would never think of voting for a Democrat.
Well, those people are damned fools. Only the Democrats stand between the Republicans and the pursuit of their agenda. No other party offers viable resistance.
However, I'm still not sure how to verify the FPGA. Maybe you second-source and distribute the different chips at random, but who's to keep Xilinx and Altera from colluding?
They say the mind is the first thing to
MoveON PAC is hosting a petition to support this bill and other similar bills in the works ... the petition is simple and non-partisan:
"Congress must support electoral reforms such as guaranteeing paper receipts for electronic voting machines, providing remedies for long lines, and prohibiting partisan election officials."
http://www.moveonpac.org/repairthevote/
More here.
Finding the text of this bill has been difficult. The PDF at the PFAW website is gone (why???). Here is Google's HTML cache.
Also, I am absolutely convinced there is some form of incestuous relationship between DailyKos and Slashdot. Way too many stories crediting Kos's blog are making it to the Slashdot front page.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
The bill stinks of having been written by lawyers with no worthwhile input from software people. The buzzwords are there, but the end product is incoherent.
If the code is open to inspection, there is no need for the background checks. That's just a way of inadvertently preventing the best people from working on the code. Any attempt to license coders sets a disastrous precendent in any event and should be rejected outright.
"Chain of custody" for code is bullshit; this isn't the pharmaceutical industry. What's really needed is verification that the binary is derived from the published source. The correct way to do that is to fully specify the development environment and configuration that generated the code. Then anyone else can reproduce it.
The other thing that's needed is a means of verifying that the binary loaded onto the machine is the one generated from the code using the specified development environment. SHA512 (or whatever) hashes can help with this, as can digital signatures. The "can't transfer over the Internet" requirement is inane and seems to be there only because of ignorance about methods of verifying integrity, regardless of how the file gets transferred. Think they've ever heard of VPNs? Do they think there's a risk in using them?
I agree with a number of the goals of this bill. But it kind of depresses me what a dog's breakfast they have produced.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Others have been having fun extending your logic, and I certainly don't want to be left out:
- Either you'll die in Texas or you won't. Seems that if you cannot prove you'll die in Texas, you won't die in Texas. So get yourself to Texas right now!
- Either your wife is pregnant with a girl or a boy. Seems that if you cannot prove she's carrying a boy, you must not be having a boy. So paint the bedroom pink.
But unlike dying in Texas or having a girl instead of a boy, there's a burden of proof involved here. And you've got it ass-backwards. The burden of proof rests on the state, not the voter. It's not my responsibility to make sure that the machine I vote on isn't stealing my vote. The state bears a fiduciary responsibility to guarantee auditability and transparency to the voter. They must be able to prove to us that our votes were accurately counted. If they cannot prove that the election wasn't stolen, it must be presumed to be stolen, even if we conversely cannot prove that it actually was. The burden of proof is on them, not us.They failed at this wherever they introduced Diebold vote counting machines. They had plenty of time to prepare, they had our tax dollars, what did they do with it? They bought pretty black boxes that made voting "fun" even as they removed the auditability of the voting process. Now they can't prove the election wasn't stolen in those districts. Oops. And this will happen again, and again, in future elections, including ones whose outcomes you may not like.
It's related to the notion of a conflict of interest. The appearance of a conflict of interest is ethically considered to be a conflict of interest. If you're an FDA commissioner, for example, the burden of proof rests on you to prove that your second job at Novartis won't affect your objectivity when approving their pharmaceuticals. If you can't prove it, then the appearance of a conflict of interest remains, which means you've got a conflict of interest and should step down. It's not our job as consumers of FDA-approved drugs to prove that your heart isn't pure and to be on guard whenever we swallow a pill. We pay taxes so that we don't have to worry about that.
(Merely disclosing your conflict of interest as you take a position- yoo hoo everyone, by the way I may have a conflict of interest in this job I'm about to take- has become fashionable in the past, oh say, four years, but it's not ethical- you shouldn't be accepting a position at all if it places you in a situation where you even appear to have a conflict of interest.)
No, the party of felons is the party of Delay. The party in bed with Enron. THAT'S the party of felons. And frankly, you've listed all the "oooo evil" felonies. But not all felons are rapists.
If you are a citizen and you pay taxes, you should have the right to vote. Priod. If you disagree with this, you don't believe in democracy. Are Republicans the Party of Tyranny?
And who where plans to write their senators and urge them to sign onto this important piece of legislation?
By Law the voting process in a state is up to that state. To say otherwise violates the 10th Amendment.
Get a free ipod.
As an experiement, I'd like to see one senator from every state get elected by a process other than popular vote.
...and see what kind of results that produces.
Lets say, jury trial. If it's good enough for mass murders, it's good enough for our political leaders.
Just get a random sample of 100 people have them listen to a detailed analysis of the issues, debates from the candidates (a candidate being the top 5 people in terms of approval rating in a public survey or somthing other than that. I'm not sure )
It would at least get some folks not motivated entirely by major corporations... maybe.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Be careful before embracing ANYTHING they propose. You can bet there is something wrong with it to their advantage. Especially if Hilary has something to do with it.
Did anyone read in the bill that the dynamic duo wants voting day to be a Federal holiday? Do you know who benefits from that? Democrats.
Do you get to take off on all Federal holidays? Thought not. Most of us don't, but all Federal employees do, as do unions, including teachers' unions. Guess who those groups vote for.
A better plan would be to have 24 hours of voting and have all the polls in the country open and close at exactly the same time. That way, no matter which shift you work, you could vote more easily. Even better would be holding the election over the weekend - polls open from Friday noon until Monday noon. Don't hold your breath; it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
Of course, laws concerning voting are supposed to be left up to the states, but when has the Federal government kept its nose out of state affairs?
I have the main section of the code. Here it is:
vote_count++;
does the same thing.
If anybody wants to tell me I'm an idiot for holding this opinion, go right ahead. I'm not interested in arguing
No, she is never interested in arguing. That would imply listening to my opinion. She just wants me to listen to her opinions, not have to listen to mine if they differ!
Again, like my wife, I notice that even though you aren't 'interested in arguing', you are interested in stating your position, then defending it if anyone attacks it.
First thing they need to fix is the fraud. No matter what side you were on in the last election, you're sure that the OTHER side committed fraud. That's got to stop.
...and make damn sure that people that commit fraud, in whatever form it takes, get prosecuted. A few convictions on that would stop voting fraud pretty damn quick.
Get the dead people off the voting lists, make sure that people that can vote are allowed to vote, make sure the people that shouldn't be able to vote aren't voting.
He may not be perfect, but if he were, there would be plenty of suckers hating him. The 2004 US election did not have half the level of validation that the Chavez recall had. Did you forget the Chavez recall had 3 paper trails? and 2 international groups said it was valid? and that his strongest support is in the largest demographic groups?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
It's H.R. 550, and can be read from the Library of Congress. It has 102 cosponsors, all of them Democrats.
Tough bill. All voting code must be available for inspection by anybody. Diebold will hate this.
You are pro-low-taxes and pro-war? Then, logically, you are pro-enormous-national-debt. Pardon me for saying so, but I think $7700000000000.00 in debt is enough. That's one hell of a inheritance to leave your kids. I'm burning spent mod points to say this so I might as well speak my mind here; America has spent enough money ousting Saddam to buy a new home for each and every one of the 1.3 million homeless children in America. So, as an American, which do think is most important? Nevermind, I know your duckspeak answer.
chance of this passing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I agree with them too?! I gotta go reexamine my premises...
Geeky modern art T-shirts
This bill does absolutely nothing. How does open-source fix anything in this case? If you have voting machines put together in 50 different ways by 50 different tech solutions, who does one call to fix a problem? Who are you holding accountable for security of the votes?
The answer is state control versus corporate control. The state (either all 50 or more likely the federal government) is going to be the one dictating the "open" standard. And if it's a choice between corporate control and government control, I'll take corporate, thank you very much.
After all, if they don't live up to my standard, I can always fire them.
If we're going to do that, how about also limiting donations so that said individuals can only donate to politicians for whom they can vote? I.e., no money from Massachusetts going to NY Senator Schumer. And/or, how about putting all donations in one big pot for a given race and apportioning it equally to all candidates in that race? It really isn't fair that the tinfoil hat wearing loon who harrasses the pigeons is at such a disadvantage in his bid for Congress.
You can read the bill here: http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/dfiles/file_493.pdf The act doesn't make the source code open. * It only requires source code be viewable by the commission, which is exactly as it is now. The public are now allowed to view the code, however they are not allowed to receive it over the internet, modify it, or redistribute it to anyone. They are also not allowed to use it to make their own voting machine. The bill requires background checks on programmers. * How this affects open source development should be rather obvious. I can't possibly make a voting machine if I have to run background checks on the thousands of people who have contributed to Linux throughout the world. This requirement looks specifically designed to thwart open source development. The bill prohibits distributing voting machine source code over the internet. * This is an effective ban on open source software being used for voting machines. I cannot believe how ignorant or corrupt a politician would have to be to support such a travesty. I knew there was something wrong when Barbara Boxer actually appeared to have done something useful.
I really wished that they had set this limit to increase yearly with inflation. This gives them an excuse years down the road to raise it to something like $5,000, a value which inflation wouldn't have reached yet.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
And the first salvo goes to Candidate H. Clinton.
Write up a legislative proposal in which most everything sounds good and simple, honest and true. Bury a couple of things in it which are clear attempts at tweaking election results in the favor of the Democrats.
The real key issues here are the election-day registration, and the votes for felons.
Election-day registration is, to me, a nightmare of an idea. Without any undeniable proof of citizenship or way to enforce one and only one vote per person, I can envision buses full of illegal aliens being sent from one precinct to another, adding votes for whatever party is paying them. Over the top? Ridiculous? Perhaps... but then, who would have thought we'd have had a local party rep paying people (WITH COCAINE) to fill out batches of bogus voting registration forms? That happened in Ohio in 2004.
Votes for felons? Well, the current law says they don't have the right to vote. Whether or not that's the right thing to do is certainly debatable. But it's clearly an attempt to generate votes for Democrats -- statistics show that a large majority of felons would likely vote that way.
If Republicans back the bill, they're giving Democrats a potential (and depending on your views, perhaps unfair) advantage in the next elections. If they don't, the Democrats will make the cry "They're against honest votes!" to the media. Repubs are kinda stuck, since they have no way of doing line-item votes.
Now... if a politician actually wanted to FIX the system, instead of twist it to their personal favor, we'd resolve the issue of proving citizenship and voting only once. The first is hard, since the US doesn't really have "citizenship papers" like most other countries. The ink-on-the-thumb solution used by the Afghans and Iraqis seemed a pretty simple solution for the second one.
''(iii) The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection with the voting system is not transferred over the Internet."
... So if I want to examing the software, I can't download it over the internet. OK, I suppose they'll have to have it available on CD.
Hmmm
But this clause seems to say that, if I read that CD on my computer and email you a copy of part of the software, that software instantly becomes illegal to use. The manufacturer did fail to prevent me from transferring a copy to you over the internet.
So if I want to sabotage some voting software, all I need to do is find a copy and email it to a friend. I present evidence to a court that I did this, and the court will issue an order that the software may not be used in a voting machine.
Why would these senators want me (or anyone else with internet access) to be able to do this?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
dehumanize (...) hence the original poster saying "are we okay with giving a felon back its right to vote?".
:-)
That was me trying to be gender neutral. You sexists, you.
A person is an "it" too. So is "a human".
This PC nonsense would be hard to do in a language like mine, or in German, where the gender of a word does not necessarily have anything to do with sex.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I don't like open source. I'm a programmer. I can recall looking at a "how to spot security holes" site, reading some code to find a problem and being unable to find it!
OpenBSD with some of the best, most paranoid code reviewers in the world let slip one hole in the last 8 years. (Might be more by now) That hole was an accident, written by a coder who was trying to do things right and failed. It was not intentionally placed there by someone trying to hide his tracks.
If you want to see hidden tracks, go see some entries in the IOCCC. Some are cleaver enough to fool the judge until the program was run. Now imagine that The author of this entry was trying to cheat the system on a large scale? Could you detect it? I don't think I can. (And I understood that code enough to not be fooled)
The intent behind this is fine, but here's the problem: can you prove that the code you inspected is running on every single voting machine, on voting day? Until you can solve that problem (which I would argue is basically impossible) then these legal improvements are at best small patches on a fundamentally flawed system.
I write about electronic voting in my blog, Paper Vote Canada.
They propose a bill that would make voters produce ID in order to vote. At least that way, we could see what a REAL vote in Illinois would look like.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Blame Reagan for the broken Social Security system, since he's the guy that raised the amount taken out of your paycheck to 15% (capped for the wealthy of course). Not only that, blame him and every president since then for loaning the additional $200-300 billion dollars generated by this to the government to be spent elsewhere. Finally, if Bush 43 has his way, you'll be able to blame him for dumping all that extra money into the overvalued stock market. Incidentally, that is just before the baby boomers tap out their mutual fund investments all at once to stagnate/crash the market, thus saving retirement for this generation while screwing the next. Fantastic plan. Boomers: 2 Kids: 0. Any other pearls of wisdom you "fing" interesting? How about this instead: Stop taking my 15% and let me manage my own retirement.
I wonder how many people imagined nitro-glycerine before at last someone lived long enough to be able to have claimed to invent it...
Yet they are against requiring proof of US Citizenship to vote in US national elections...
The US Commission on Civil Rights found massive evidence of voter disenfranchisement. They recommended immediate litigation by the Attorney General's office, a recommendation that was, of course, ignored.
The NORC recount by the media organizations showed that Gore won in a state-wide Florida recount under all standards possible for hanging chads and such. They had half a dozen scenarios for accepting ballots and Gore won in every single scenario.
And that's even after you factor in the obvious GOP cheats like accepting late overseas ballots in GOP counties (and only GOP counties), hiring private companies to "scrub" the voting lists of legal voters (most of whom were black), illegally excluding valid Gore over-votes, and the curious "Jews for Buchanan" phenonemon in Palm Beach. Even after all that crap Gore still would have won if the Republicans had allowed a full, fair, state-wide recount.
Count the votes, Gore wins. Don't count the votes, Bush wins. It was that simple.
The US electoral system is a crock.
Now what we need to do is dissolve the electoral college as it is, and introduce a set up in which everyones vote counts towards an outcome. A system where votes are added up, and the person with the most votes wins. A little more democracy is just what we need. Where it doesn't matter what the majority of the state is, that a republican in Massachusetts, or a Democrat in Virginia knows that their vote does count...
Mabe in my lifetime...
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
subject goes here
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
"...and that the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public."
Wow, I'll be impressed beyond belief if the public will be able to read object code.
=\/\/= If it's too loud, turn it down.
Besides a receipt, it should have a number on it (not attached to me, just a receipt number) and you can then go to a web site and see that your vote was counted and correct.
Then anyone can go to that site and count all the votes themselves!
The number of people actually voting is public, so there shouldn't be more than that online. Some citizen groups should count (double check) how many people voted at each voting place.
That's what I call open voting!
Don't patent this you corporate bastards, I just made this public domain at this date so unless you can prove you have prior art on this idea, too bad.
It is now public domain by posting it here on this public forum.
In the latest election Diebold delivered the election to the Repubs by an altogether sneakier means. They simply under-delivered machines to those districts which were heavily Democratic and/or delivered "broken" machines to those districts. It worked like a charm. Ohio and Florida were scrutinized closely, but there it appears that this sort of thing went on wherever Diebold and their "brother" company were involved.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Funny, Deibold seems to get the money I order out of the ATM rights *EVERY TIME* and I've never had a problem with my bank balance - *EVER*.
The ballot had a flawed interface- it introduced a systematic error that turned Bush votes into Bush votes and Gore votes into Buchanan votes.
Your idea of a flawed interface may be someone else's dream. See: Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, Windows Program Manager, Windows Start Menu Explorer Shell and Mac 9 and Mac OS X, OS/2 to name a few. You claim and feign poor interface when the vote doesn't go your way.
All you people strive for is egalitarian fascism/communism with the exception for the "think for you" "armchair experts on everything" politicians like Kerry. As long as everyone gets fucked equally you are happy.
YOU will not take my guns.
YOU will not take my rights.
YOU will never succeed in breaking the back of "redneck" America with your vile disparaging hypocrisy.
Give me non-authoritarian centrist Libertarianism, or give me a break. You fools that shill for the Democrats and somewhat the GOP are a joke.
I like that you called it a paradox, because just like all paradoxes, while superficially confusing, it really does make sense if you look at it from the right perspective. Voters don't like negative political ads because they reveal what scumbags the candidates are. Negative political adds work because the candidates actually are scumbags, and the ads tell that truthfully. Voters simultaneously want as much information possible about the candidates, and want not to be disillusioned with the political process. That's why they express conflicting opinions about negative ads.
The second amendment is actually CHARGING every citizen to train and own both pistols and long guns, and to carry them where ever possible. This could be extrapolated into modern times as meaning:
- Obtain an off-road-able diesel truck.
- Obtain lots of cure/salted/spoil proof/canned food and potable water.
- Obtain a machine gun, shotgun, rifles, and sidearms and train with them and stockpile ammunition.
- Train in martial arts.
- Be prepared for Armageddon or to overthrow a tyrannical government run by Diane Feinstein, Barabara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Charles Schumer and Ted Kennedy.
All I have to say to you evil, hypocritical Federalist authoritarian gun grabbing communist-fascists is this:
signed, lord tsarkon of tsarkon reports.
Any bills that were under consideration in the 108th Congress died on December 31 when that Congress came to an end. Bringing up bills from before December 31 is ancient history unless they have been re-introduced in the Congress. It seems that previous efforts have been consolidated and refined and introduced as a new bill in the new Congress, which is usually what happens at the beginning of a new Congress. Even the recently passed Class Action bill, which enjoyed major support at the end of the 108th, had to be re-introduced as a new bill prior to its passage by the 109th Congress.
Whether this introduction by Clinton, Kerry, et al is a publicity stunt--sure, all bill introductions are publicity stunts to some extent. But it's certainly NOT true that this bill is redundant because of older bills. Those older bills are dead now.
What's that about the First Ammendment? Giving someone money isn't speech.
But campaign finance regulations, if they work, work specifically by obstructing political speech. The goal may be to keep corporations from buying influence, but when you do that by having the government make decisions about which organisations can and cannot freely pay to make their ideas widely heard, you do run into First Amendment concerns.
The right to free speech would mean nothing if it meant a right to speak freely only in your own closet: it is also essential that you be free to use effective means to make yourself heard. Imagine, for instance, that wood pulp was strictly controlled by the government, with only selected classes of people or organisations permitted to use it. Everyone else would be free to "speak", and use printing presses - they'd just have a hard time getting the paper to put out any books, newspapers, pamphlets - would that not raise First Amendment questions? Or substitute ink, or copper wire, or fiberglass... or spectrum, which is controlled, in ways that constantly raise Constitutional questions here on slashdot.
No, money isn't speech, and neither is paper, or copper, but campaign finance laws operate specifically by controlling political speech (which should be the most strongly protected form of speech), by controlling how money can be used to get political speech into the public eye. I was disappointed that the Supreme Court didn't overturn more of McCain-Feingold.
Anyway, doesn't it worry you to have laws designed in effect to keep us from having "too much" speech?
As for "corporate citizenship" - No, corporations aren't citizens - but they are owned and controlled by groups of citizens, who ultimately decide how the corporation will act (usually by delegating to a smaller group of people the power to make those decisions). I don't think that corporations should buy campaign ads - I agree that the interested individuals should contribute through some other, non-business channel - but I also don't know that they can constitutionally be forbidden to do so.
Churches, like corporations, are not people - should it be legal to prohibit churches from making statements on political issues? Or from paying to publicize those statements? And if you think that should be legal, how do you go about deciding which organizations should be able to freely make, distribute, and pay for political speech? A list of government-approved political organisations?
Sorry about the rant; I think I share your basic goals, but I don't see that corporations are particularly being given rights that do not follow naturally from their being a form of collective action by individuals who do have those rights (can a corporate property be searched without a warrant? should it be?) - and I don't like seeing the First Amendment eroded, even for a good cause. (It's always for a good cause, isn't it?)
It makes just as little sense to say that the system absolutely cannot be improved, as it does to say the system is completely broken.
Who gives a shit who won? I want fair and open elections I can rely on. Our system of voting is a patchwork of human systems, and like all human systems it can be improved.
Really, it's nice to know you're taking sides against improving our election system. The only logical reason for taking such a stance is that you hope to profit from its shortcomings at some point.
If you feel that it resulted in the correct decision this time (despite its shortcomings), then I would think you would be all for improving it--the results can only get more correct with improvement to the system.
Not bad at all. Finally something me and members of a major non-fringe political party can agree on.
"The bill also makes it a federal crime to commit deceptive practices, such as sending flyers into minority neighborhoods telling voters the wrong voting date, and makes these practices a felony punishable by up to a year of imprisonment."
Weak! That is a very lame and weak punishing ment for subversion of democracy. It should be punishable by death!
I assume you're talking about the 1886 SCOTUS case Santa Clara County (yes, that's Silicon valley) vs. Southern Pacific. Itsaid that corporations had the rights of individuals under the 14th amendment.
Funny how conservatives talk about liberal activist courts. I don't see a single mention of corporations in the 14th amendment.
And obviously corporations have more rights than individuals. Corporations don't have death penalthy cases with a court appointed defense lawyer making $8 an hour. Corporations aren't drafted to fight wars.
The Republican party had rapidly changed, Lincoln said this in 1864: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." However, all 9 justices at the time (and it was a 9-0 ruling) were appointed by Republicans, including 2 by Lincoln himself.
My browser is refusing to post the link without the space between buy and chapter1. It should not be there. Remove it to get the correct URL.
This wont happen becouse (1) its deacent and honest (2) its fair and the government cant tamper with it at will (3)its a good idea (4)America is going to a new place where the corporate runs the world. (5)only americans will be there becouse their gonna be very much alone in this world soon enough Like Russia was.
I Predict A Riot
It is probably because I'm from Urp, but this behavior is totaly unrational to me, claiming to belong to a political party witch you don't have much in common with.
What is it? is it based on place of birth? on age? on color of your shoes?
And its not just one political party that has this behavior, both Republicans and Democrats have it, extualy most US residents seem to have this emotional tie with there "local" party.
Wouldn't it seem to be the right time to let go of your blind dedication to a certain political body and actualy vote on the party that you agree with on most points?
So, given the ability to vote in what is probably the single most important election the world will see in at least the next four years, you based your decision off of a statistically insignificant sample of attitudes and behaviors that have nothing at all to do with the candidates in question?
Fuck you for being part of the problem.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
. . . to use the parlaince of Yakov Smirnov, in Soviet Russia, not the modern day group of countries that at one time were under control of a communist dictatorship.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
They can try, but i don't think that it can correct the problem of Democrats losing in a big way.
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
Is this a troll?
HAND
That's precisely why the press cheers. He's a huge success! The problem is, you're neither in his "base" nor a Bushie (ie, moonie). Sure, it looks like failure, but if you've got money, it rocks!
The reasons for the elite tax cuts were to reward his "base" and to drive up the debt. As long as the illogical cuts (wartime, "unfair") didn't become an issue, the deficit could be used to justify a pro-base/anti-dem budget (all defense & security, cuts to the undeserving non-wealthy).
If the Social Security suicide pill is swallowed whole, it will murder or mortally wound the despised New Deal. Bonus side-effect: it alienates Democrat supporters. Betrayal, broken promise. Republicans would then (theoretically) have decades of power. The dawn of a tyrannical reign of terror.
The tax "deform": eliminate income and payroll taxes, add national sales tax @ 30% ("23%") would literally be money in the bank, for Bush's base. Rate is low on purpose to force further cuts to Democrat programs. To recoup lost revenue, the rate may need to be jacked up to 50%.
All of that Bush does is for power, for his base and for perception management. Everything is success or neutral, failure does not exist. Things might suck for 90% of the country, but the base is yumming it up. Bush is a paradox: the best and worst President in history simultaneously!
R23well.
it seems like usa has a pretty bad % of volunteers for this stuff. around here they're hand counted, the votes themselfs are numbers on paper. we get first night results, and if the % of people willing to volunteer woulb be the same it would scale pretty well.
though.. the real reason why electronic voting is being pushed is that it's a business. they have an intrest to lobby it through.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Agreement? The acid test: Free Republic.
If they're neutral/supportive.... Consensus?
When the bill requiring public school teachers to be homosexual atheist liberals passes.
Not that it isn't a civilized idea but added in the federal holiday almost assures Republicans have an out to vote it down on "corporate freedom" issues.
Every vote counts..but what's more important, is who's counting those votes.
A good friend will help you move. A really good friend will help you move a body.
I think this bill was intended to fail, probably to embarrass republicans.
95% of it is proposing apple pie, the flag, and mom, but the the last bit about allowing ex convicts to vote is perfect fuel for the republican spin doctors who would want to shoot it down.
The people who proposed this bill are seasoned politicians and had to know this so I am concluding it is designed to bait the republicans into voting it down.
Fewer. Your gun has killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy's car.
See, this is what happens when teaching relies too heavily on phonics!
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
...of who they are. Yea, I can't stand either of their politics, but keeping the voting system available to the people who are using it is a good idea. But, Bush is acting more like a liberal in a lot of respects, so who knows, he may go along with the idea. Though, the Ivory(r) percentage of the people in gov't don't understand a bit from a nybble, so it'll probably be shot down.
Oh, anyhoo, in keeping with my 0 score contest, please mod this down appropriately.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
"When the bill requiring public school teachers to be homosexual atheist liberals passes."
So sometime in... 2009?
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
...when Democrats start supporting national voter registration to set consistent standards and prevent multiple voting.
Your question really should be:
Is being convicted of violence that put someone in hospital for two weeks reason enough to be stripped of your voting rights for the rest of your life?
I will agree with your comments as long as the law does very specifically state what deceptive statements are. For instance, listing the wrong date or polling places on a flyer. I'm not sure what else could be included. One could not say that statements like "George Bush: the right choice for liberal America." While he is not a liberal some will argue that he is still the right choice for liberal America. Also it should not be a felony. A misdemeanor punishable with fines and community service should do with that service performed in the community where the deception occurred. My real problem with the bill is automatically giving felons their franchise back. These are not the sorts of people I want participating my government. Additionally felons should not be allowed to hold elected office either. Perhaps some sort of clemency could be used to give felons back the franchise but this should be something one has to work for not just be given.
This is the first proposal by either Clinton or Kerry that I can get completely behind.
Being a Republican (for most intents and purposes) of the opinion that the 2004 election was legitimate, I wholeheartedly support any legislation that will make the election process less succeptible to both fraud and suspicion of fraud.
Bravo!
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
All right!! I've always wanted human-readable object code!
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
... how are they going to rig elections over there if they get a better voting system? Next thing you know they'll be gettig rid of the electoral college... naaa.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The bill includes a provision for felons who have "paid their debt to society" to be allowed to vote. You have to consider that felons tend to have an anti-social/sociopathic outlook or disorder. The select few are the Jean Valjeans (sp?) of the world who statistically barely exist. Bad idea in the middle of a good bill.
Bang 'ole Bess, man. --BESS
"that the source and object code be readable by humans"
How the heck are they going to make object code readable by humans? A hex listing?
Source code yes but object code? I think this is just a publicity stunt at best or else they would have researched it better.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
[input type="radio" value="republican_vote"]Republican Candidate
[input type="radio" value="republican_vote"]Democratic Candidate
[input type="radio" value="republican_vote"]Third Party Candidate
Deceptive under the bill, section 603, is any intentionally false statement about the time place or manner of a federal election.
Say you were trying to register blacks in florida 40 years ago, or petition to get Nader on the ballot. You might make some innocent mistake about the manner of voting, that has nothing to do with depriving anyone of their voting rights. Now be prepared to defend yourself in court and raise a reasonable doubt that it was unintentional. Good luck with that. It's already hard to recruit volunteers for these kinds of activities. I've had clients who made some innocent mistake about which campaign forms to fill out when be threatened with jail. Bills like this chill free speech, and are selectively enforced in ways that impact racial and political minority groups. It might hold up in court - McCain Feingold did, mostly - but it is badly written and won't accomplish what they want it to.
Also the price tag for this bill is $3 billion for the first year.
The Democratic party needs its core constituents and fine patriots like Lynne Stewart to be able to vote when they get out of jail. It is crucial to the cause.
The reasoning behind letting a Felon out and still not voting is that while they may have paid back their "Debt" to society, they still have to earn back the trust. That said, not all felons have their voting rights eliminated. Also, felons can get their voting rights back by a court order from a judge.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Next time I'll use !=, =, etc.
Now fuck off Grammar Nazi.
How about this - since you are too stupid to get the meaning from context.
I own a gun. My gun has never killed someone. I have never killed someone. Ted Kennedy committed several felonies. He got a woman pregnant. He drove off a bridge into water while drunk. He left her. Forensics showed she lived quite some time in the car and actually died from lack of oxygen. He left the scene of a car accident. Vehicular homicide, DUI, and leaving the scene of an accident where someone was injured. Major felonies. Instead of raising help, he continued to drink all night long.
- "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
- Plato
- "Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?"
- Senator Ted Kennedy, 1973
We have a murdering senator who murdered Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick on Martha's Vineyard. He murdered a woman and also grabs guns. He himself is prohibited from gun ownership due to this crime.
A dead woman, a lying senator who takes constitutional rights and all you can think of is to try and (in this case, incorrectly) correct grammar.
This is the failings of an education that stops people from THINKING.
Good day, authoritarian fascist.
You tried to skirt the morality of homicide with the value of grammar. -
However, even with *that* twisted of a sound, "fewer" and "less" hardly sound close enoguh to each other to confuse . .
hawk
hawk
Okay. let me say it again for the fucking retard:
Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun.
The black helicopters are on the way. Resistance is futile.
Good day!
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Seriously, name a communist that was elected in a real election.
OK, but first you name one time George W. Bush was democratically elected to the presidency in a REAL election.
While I applaude these initiatives, don't forget that these issues should be decided by each state, best representing the people of them.
Don't forget it's the United States of America and not the Federal Districts of America... all to oft people forget that each state is supposed to be sovereign.
YOU will never succeed in breaking the back of "redneck" America with your vile disparaging hypocrisy.
Nobody really gives a shit.
If you had a scrap of integrity, however, you would quit living off of my subsidies you fucking pathetic leech.
You take yourself far too seriously. His response was fucking hilarious, not some attempt to devalue murder.
No, it isnt. Murdering your captors is the ONLY way.
KA PLAH! KA PLAH! KA PLAH! KA PLAH! KA PLAH!
The Dominion was only defeated when the KLINGONS rejoined!
I live in the cities and pay more taxes than you FUCKER. I own a business and Employ others FUCKER.
/me Goes back to job - you go on back to the EDD checks that I PAY FOR FUCKER.
You make the MISTAKE , Fucker, that I contribute less, FUCKER. I have personally created 10 jobs, FUCKER.
So, FUCKER. I hereby say this:
I have every right to CCW to protect myself against you and YOUR POORLY RAISED CHILDREN.
FUCKER.
You will never win. And if I find you in my employ, YOU WILL BE FIRED.
Fuck you!
Get busy murdering Teri Schiavo while having a candle light vigil for murderers facing execution.
Get busy honoring Hunter for shooting himself while on the phone with his wife.
Get busy saying that Libya capitulating, Syria faltering, Iraq elections were a FAILURE, while worry about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
You are the worst hypocrites, burning gas and stepping on others like everyone else but pretending you are above it all.
Well, the problem is not your guns. The problem is the guns of Pimpy McThugThug in upper Cracktown, and the fact that they can shoot a lot of bullets very quickly and he doesn't really care who's in the general viscinity of his targets.
The problem is Todd, who has been stocking up his army to make all the kids who laughed at him pay.
The problem is Bubba, who knows that The Feds just found out about his 17 wives (13 of which are also his daughters) and isn't going down without a fight (or without his wives).
These people have are neither militiamen nor well-regulated. They stated the intent of the amendment clearly, and it had nothing to do with vigilanteism, hunting, or "rugged individualism" - the right to bare arms is for the purposes of war. Such is the function of a militia. Anyone of those other causes may or may not have merit, but they do not necessarily fall under the 2nd amendment.
Oh, and they did not necessarily say that the purpose of said militia was to overthrow the government - although it was hinted in some letters. And particularly they did not have the obvious bias of only overthrowing left-wing governments.
So, in short: please stop trolling. You're hurting America.
There is no fucking problem. Here is a list for you to address before you fuck with guns:
o accidents.
Heart disease.
Diabetes.
Cancer.
HIV/AIDS/STDs.
Aut
Teen pregnancy and drug abuse.
Alcohol abuse.
More die from all of those every year than guns. Feel free to take a #1 problem stance on Guns once you've fucking solved those.
You see, since guns aren't a problem, its easy to demonize them and say you are "doing something." Curing heart disease with nano-bots takes INTELLIGENCE, something gun-grabbers DONT HAVE.
So listen to me, prick. Stop fantasizing about these FALSE CIRCUMSTANCES that statistically NEVER HAPPEN, especially when compared to death rates of the aforementioned problems.
Try this:
- Big Brother.
- Helping people DIRECTLY, not some fake charity for a donation, volunteer your time DIRECTLY to the needy.
- Remove yourself as a social liability, have no debt, educate your children.
When you get done with curing cancer and paying off your debts and taking care of your children, then you will realize guns did nothing to prevent you from realizing your dream. Only thing you do by grabbing guns is prevent your fellow citizens a right to their pursuit of happiness and security.
You will fail the charge. You and your children will NEVER contribute to curing disease, you will use loans and society to get educated, you will default on debt costing responsible people money.
You will never succeed, and you will never be right about regulating guns.
First guns. Then knives. Then bats. The gold clubs. Where does it end?
You just dedicated a hundred words to arguing with me over semantics, and I'm the one playing word games?
That's not semantics. That's a straight lie designed specifically to deceive.
The fact that you don't know the difference explains why you fall for the blizzard of propaganda coming from the right these days.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Wow, you seem to know an awful lot about me from my position on the 2nd amendment (which is not the same as my position on gun control). Do you tell other people's fortunes too? Do Taco next!
Like I said - you're hurting America.
Do you mean that 'Progress for America' with their $35,631,378 donation is liberal/progressive? I also think you forgot to read the footnote about the #2 spender:
* Joint Victory Campaign 2004 is a joint fund-raising committee run by America Coming Together and the Media Fund. Money raised by JVC is divided between these two beneficiaries. Combining receipts for these three groups would result in double-counting.
You are hurting America because you are trying to interpret amendments RESTRICTIVELY, thus reducing the total pool of freedom. You are an agent of darkness, working to suppress the rights of Man.
In addition to this, you are trying to SQUELCH me, gag and suppress me from expressing my opinion about your wrong-headed suppressive ideas.
Your answer, not that I'm not RIGHT about something, but that my thinking does LOOK GOOD to others.
You are PATHETIC.
The rights of man are not fashion show or something that should be defined by the thinking of communists and socialists, which is what most of the rest of the world is.
We went to the moon - veni vidi vici. We can have guns and not kill each other. We may conquer people but we always leave, unlike communists and imperialists.
Ayn Rand is AGAINST you.
The political spectrum is mapped onto a line but it's really a circle, or perhaps a torus. Totalitarian left-wing and totalitarian right-wing meet at an arbitrary point. But I say that although those who are subtle and cunning about the attempt to seize citizen power (that is TREASON according to our constitution and declaration of independence -- WE THE PEOPLE), currently the right wing, must fall second in line behind those who gladly brag about their contempt for their RULERS and EMPLOYERS, currently the right wing.
I hate all dictatorial overlords, and I hate all nanny states.
The next step is to make sure there is good encrption/authentication at each step where the votes are recorded _and_ to have good control of the physical ballots. For example, at each point when a machine is step up and an observer is placed, that observer/tech should record their key. Similarly, whenever ballots are transferred, multiple folks(of different parties) should be in control of the ballots. Still, there is at least a start here.
- http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=327
- http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/08
/ 04/florida/print.html
- http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=2004051
7 &s=palast
- http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2002-10-31/news
/ news2.html
Friends of freedom ChoicePoint and Katherine Harris play prominent rolls too. Good thing they support the party in power or they'd be in for some serious jail time.Lawsuit on same:
- http://www.naacp.org/news/2000/2000-11-28.html
Enjoy.Tsarkon is being butressed by more sane individuals.
Pimpy is the problem. Put criminals in jail. Solved.
Todd didnt break any laws stockpiling, he broke them when he committed murder. Sounds like you endorse PRECRIME (TM), mister Minority Report. Lets disarm everyone because someone MIGHT go nuts.
Look at Waco. Bubba more or less is Koresh. The reason Waco turned into a flamefest is that the Feds simply didnt starve him out.
So now free gun ownership has to be limited because of poor police work.
How about FUCK OFF. If I find you, I'll stab you do death with my gun in my holster.
The corporations selling the voting equipment should only be furnishing the hardware, not the software.
The software should be written by a public open source organization, like the Open Source Applications Foundation(OSAF) or a Sourceforge project. Then all hardware manufacturers must use the same software. When bugs are found in the code, new code should be furnished to the hardware manufacturers.
We are letting the tail wag the dog here. We should be controlling the corporations, not the other way around.