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Florida Voting Machine Logs Reveal Anomalies
boot1780 writes "Having 'successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election,' Black Box Voting reports that the 'internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.' Besides the date discrepancies, they claim to have discovered countless other errors and anomalies, including a case of one voting machine being 'powered down 128 times during the election'." Given the findings here, can we have a do-over?
I thought this was common knowledge? :-) Move along...
Is anyone else not surprised?
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
You're having GW Bush as a president! Why complain about elections and revote...?
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
Bender: Wait, my cheating unit malfunctioned. You gotta' give me a do-over.
Dealer: Sorry - the house limit is 3 do-overs.
We could grab 5 random slashdot nerds, give them a keg of beer and 48 hours, and they could make a better voting machine than what's out there now.
Quitcher whinin' 'bout the digital voting machines. You know as well as I do that the voting machine companies are wiser when it comes to choosing leaders than all you unwashed ignorant masses. (Sarcasm aside, I do hope this makes the national news)
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
Does anybody still beleive that this election wasn't fixed? I mean, really. Of course it'll never be proven, but it's so freakin' obvious. Incompetence can only explain so many problems - I think we've passed that point a long time ago.
And once again - no matter what your political persuasion, you need to demand that your representatives introduce or support legislation that requires a voting machine to produce a paper receipt for each vote, or some equally verifiable and recountable paper trail. Any politician that objects to a fair election needs to be fired and replaced.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
I'm afraid we've already issued a COMMIT. The database is fucked.
Then we get Gore. Unless they re-do it so I can be president, who cares?
The only way someone can beat you is by cheating, right?
Stop whining.
Bush stole the election fair and square. It's our (Americans') fault for not creating a massive landslide against him. The fact that a near plurality of people voted for the wanker created an opportunity for Bush 43, his brother, Kathleen Harris and the Republicans to seize power.
History will show that this election was a coup d'état, and that we were the fools who let it happen.
Want to prevent this from happening again? Andrew Tobias is the DNC treasurer: http://www.andrewtobias.com/, send Andy a message and he will tell you how to get involved.
What's so wrong about a paper ballot and a pencil?
if they want a high tech solution for the sake of being "high tech" then use a fancy engineering pencil.
I could ramble on about how the electoral college is not really independant, with the party system and all, but I need to get some work done. You get the idea.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Any democracy that don't use Black Box Voting m/c will not be acceptable to USA *cough* Palestine, Iraq
If you actually believe the vote "was not" fixed your an idiot.. This news comes as NO suprise to this reader.
Once again, too little and too late, Bush won anyway. Palm Beach is heavily Demcoratic, and run by the Democrats guys, nothing to see here, move along.
the electoral system needs to be rewritten ASAP. Otherwise, your so-called democracy is nothing but a mask, and you're living in a bipartisan dictatorship.
Everytime someone talks about the US and how they support democracy, it makes me laugh.
A new factor has come up in to addition to Stalin's old maxim "He who votes decides nothing; he who counts the votes decides everything."
Something like "Who finds out about corruption is irrelevant; who gets to decide what kinds of corruption are "Serious Stories" versus "Tinfoil Hat" material decides the rest."
Or something like that. Since the media refuses to acknowledge that there are serious questions about legitimacy under electronic voting, pointing out the problems probably doesn't matter any more - any evidence of problems is perforce "nutty conspiracy theory material" and so is a non-starter.
The number of power cycles, 128, is too neat (2^7) to have been random. It's more likely to be a bug in the software than someone actually flipping the switch that many times. If there's a bug in the reset counter, how can I know there's no bug in the vote counter too? (Answer: open source voting machines with a signature mechanism to identify the code the machine actually ran when people were voting).
Given the findings here, can we have a do-over?
NO!!! Now STFU and grow up you sniveling childish twat!
Mod me down but, know I right!
They found anomolies in 40 machines? How many machines were there in total? Did all of the anomolies favor one candidate or were they seemingly random? Was the constantly rebooting machine having hardware problems? Were the machines with wierd date stamps having hardware clock issues?
I'm not sure why this is instantly regarded as some sort of conspiracy rather than either hardware problems or incompetent voting machine vendors. Folks might want to consider the more mundane potential causes of these problems before heading for their tinfoil hat drawer.
I can already read the implication that W did the midnight voting himself. Conspiracies theorists amaze me, ie. The discrepancies and problems in the 2000 FLA vote were by and large in counties run by Democrat county clerks (FLA equivalent) You have to really squint your brain to think that Jeb poersuaded them to mess up their job as bad as they did in support of W. That said, yeah, investigate and audit the hell out of those voting machines. Any and all fraud needs to be vigorously prosecuted.
and ilk are tech idiots! Fooled ya!
Seriously, it's time for paper ballots with paper receipts given to the voters.
Otherwise there is no point in voting. Just stay home and let them put
whoever they like in office, they do that now anyway.
Given the findings here, can we have a do-over?
You get a do-over in a couple of years. Not that the Democrats will win then either.
They have been getting a little shrill lately in the wild accusations they are making. Besides, the Democrats don't seem to be offering alternative solutions to anything. They just want to be in charge of things so they can line their pockets and their backers pockets.
Is there anyway to vote for "None of the above"?
Really, ask that question to yourself. So what? It's not like we have a time machine and have a redo. Its done. Its over. Move on with your life for chrissakes.
Since the obvious inuendo here is that it was rigged in favor of GW, what's curiously absent in this "article" is what the votes were during the non-election day votes. Without that, this data is meaningless other than to support the position that the machines were messed up. Errors could have happened in either direction.
They also don't describe or detail the possibility that the logs were changed subsequent to the election. What has been the chain of custody for these machines since the election? Could normal powering up and data harvesting procedures alter the data? That's not explored in the article as written. OK so the machines 15 months later have some curious data on them. It doesn't mean it was messed up during the recount.
B O R I N G
From TFA:
Another disturbing find was several dozen voting machines with votes for the Nov. 2, 2004 election cast on dates like Oct. 16, 15, 19, 13, 25, 28 2004 and one tape dated in 2010. These machines did not contain any votes date-stamped on Nov. 2, 2004.
Damned time travellers! Don't they know that interfering with primitive human history is against the laws of time??
I bet some Andromedan Mega-Frat colony is having/will have a big laugh at their little prank.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
The article blurb seems to assume that plain-old (analog?) elections are perfect, whereas digital voting is possibly subject to fraud. In fact there is error inherent in both schemes, both intentional and unintentional, and from a variety of sources.
The problem with criticizing voting problems with electronic voting machines is that you don't have a comparable error rate for a paper ballot scheme. The question isn't how bad, it's whether it's worse or better.
And frankly, the problem isn't error, because errors are unavoiable. The problem is accountability. And until e-voting is accountable and auditable, it should go away.
Theresa LePew to me.
Take life easy: one bit at a time.
This is almost certainly an issue with the software, unless it's being claimed that voting officials tampered with the machines early. If the code weren't some secret proprietary mess, this probably could have been avoided.
I'm not looking forward to the idiocy this is going to trigger on the political debate boards. The tin foil brigade will be out in force again with this news.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Free market voting?
In Canada we have a national voting system. Voting is the same wherever you go, no matter what part of the country you are in. Each person writes a little X on a piece of paper next to the cantidate of his choice, then you put it in a box. There are serial numbers on the ballots, so if any ballots are missing, duplicated, or anything else is funny, there is a way to tell. (Not tracable, though, -- ie you can't tell who voted for whom.)
There are no computers in national elections and there is a paper trail that can be recounted as many times as anyone wishes. And results don't take weeks to come in either... or months for that matter. We always seem to have our Prime Minister and government chosen within a few hours after the polls have closed...
... Baxter
Ooops
http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110006139 http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction/mediaSnohomi shCounty.htm
How many immaculate software projects have ever come down the chute?
Instead of "Bush sucks", can these findings be leveraged into a call for increased voting software transparency, i.e. 100% FOSS?
Then, can we expand the victory to include all taxation software, such that, with due regard to privacy, you can figure out WTF is going on with your tax dollars?
Or is that kind of transparency impossible in a democracy?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I'd rather hunt with Dick Cheney than ride with Ted Kennedy!
Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun!
-Thanks folks, I'm here all afternoon.
Do you want as many do overs as you wanted recounts until Gore won in FLA in 2000? What was the final tally of recounts there? 3? 4?
I'd rather a recount/do over of past elections in the Chicago area.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
What a laugh that is, although from the types of elections third-world dictators put on even they could probably learn a thing or two from this. To be honest I doubt whether anything will get done about this because it just seems unthinkable for too many people. I don't think there's a way to deal with this and I expect people to just simply cover their ears because it makes too much of a mockery of America's democracy and famed constitution.
John Kerry, President Elect - permanently!
We did this to protect you from yourselves. If we hadn't rigged the vote then Hamas would have got in and we have to stop all aid to Florida. Democracy does not mean voting for whoever you like you know.
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
So, this comment was a troll, but the comments about Bush were not. Perhaps I am just misinterpreting the concept of a troll, or maybe, just maybe, someone needs to reevaluate their fairness in moderating. Frankly, nearly this entire discussion is a troll. I would say more, but I have a bridge to hide under.
You gonna post about the voting irregularities in Washington (state) where the Democrats won after "finding" whole ballot boxes months after the elections?
including a case of one voting machine being 'powered down 128 times during the election'
Though this was later revealed to be due to the fact that this particular voting machine ran Windows Millennium Edition as its OS.
No, I'm dreadfully sorry. You can not, I repeat, cannot have, a "do-over".
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
in the 2000 election. It isn't a stretch to see them cheating the same way again. Just that this tme, like that time, they didn't cheat ENOUGH.
t m
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a0c85230a29.h
Or maybe I'm just pissed off cause I live in a nanny state now: Seat Belt laws, child safety seat laws, no smoking laws, can't buy cough medicine in the aisle laws....
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
The rise of the "religious" right, the disenfranchisement of the poor, voter fraud, blatant cronyism, federal educational and scientific funding cuts, no-bid contracts for the oil and defense industry....
I mean, the list goes on and on. We are in a pre-fascist or proto-fascist state, end of story. When will the ACLU be labeled a "terrorist organization"?
And the obvious conclusion is that election workers own VCR's that flash '12:00'. Even if we get voting machines that produce an auditable paper trail there's still the problem of election workers who are not properly trained (or incapable) of operating the machines.
[Insert pithy quote here]
...I'm seeing at least one major misperception here. These possibly-fraudulent votes were cast in Florida's 2004 election, which was not significantly disputed. The big Palm Beach voting debacle was the 2000 election, using decrepit punch card machines and a foolish staggered two-column layout. Terry bought these paperless electronic machines in 2002 as a response to the chad backlash. She was then voted out of office in 2004 due to her demonstrated and repeated incompetence.
How hard can it be to fucking count ballots?!?!?
it's time for paper ballots with paper receipts given to the voters.
Giving paper receipts to the voters does nothing. When people talk about a paper receipt is a hard copy record of the vote cast that can later be checked against the memory of the machine. The problem with most electronic voting machines is that they don't have a hard copy record of the actual votes. It is much easier for numbers to be modified in memory when there is no way to verify those counts.
I don't see the problem with the optical scanning systems used in many places here in Florida. You get the benefit of a hard copy that can be recounted or checked plus you get the data collected by a machine which makes the initial tally fairly quick. No need for expensive touch screen equipment. Just pass out the paper ballots and markers. But that is apparently to easy.
Instead of dredging up old conspiracy theories and trying to re-hash the past elections why not present actual solutions to the problems we are facing? Wouldn't it be nice to actually have a serious discussion about the actual issues instead of each party sniping at each other? Oh wait, this is politics. The only real issue is getting your horse into power, not solving the critical issues of our time.
Never mind.
I believe in smaller, less invasive government and believe things like abortion are wrong. I believe in some of the ideal typically espoused by democrats though, environmental concerns and promoting diversity among them. Being the conservative guy I am though I don't believe it is governments job to push those things(that includes banning abortion, I think it is wrong but don't think it should be illegal) and wonder why people can't be more open on their own but that is all for another discussion.
From my very unscientific estimates less than 10% of the people that I directly know, those that were willing to disclose their votes at the time of the election, voted for the current administration. In fact I remember a general sense of disbelief that the election went as it did among most anybody I talked to. Did anybody live in an area where it was generally upbeat after the 2004 election? The depression was palpable in the air where I live. How come we go ape shit over difference in exit polling and election results in other places but we didn't seem to be fazed by it here?
I think you're just plotting to make Jesse "The Body" Ventura our next president.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Something many people here and in other predominantly-left forums seem to be missing is that many Americans truly, honestly believed that Bush was the better candidate. I doubt that your average Republican voted for Bush any more automatically than the typical Democrat voted for Kerry, and yet everyone seems to think that only Republicans were partisan voters. Well, guess what: there are sheep on both sides of the fence. Singling out one group of them will only alienate the bloc of voters you should be trying to persuade.
I voted for Bush for various reasons, but I would probably stand alongside you if a recall vote were held today. The time for partisan sniping is over. We need to work together if we want to make a difference.
As a side note to fellow Republicans, his closing advice is just as valid for us. Contact the RNC and make your opinion known. Write to your representatives and senate and let them know that you disagree with executive branch policies. This is your party: step up and take charge of it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
But but but... that challenges my worldview that Bush stole the election! The sweet innocent Democracts couldn't have possibly been committing voter fraud by double-punching voting cards to invalidate them, that's something those sneaky dirty Republicans would do!
Zell... Miller...
Anybody can join the Democratic party. It doesn't mean they belong there.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
IIRC, it's in November 2008.
The ability of the government to control the media, even in the face of the Internet, is astounding. But then, when half of the voting population is willing to believe anything they say, it's really not that hard for them to keep us "on message." What will really be surprising about this story is if it gets any attention in the mainstream media.
in my opinion, democracy is nothing more than the tyranny of the majority
May be we need to outsource this too! India - the largest democracy - does all their electioneering with machines now!
The article didn't mention if the results skewed the election one way or the other. In fact, it just pointed out that the machines were incredibly error-prone.
If the machine powered down every time someone voted for Kerry, that would be one thing, but there's nothing in the report that shows that happened.
Personally, I find it surprising that a machine cannot be constructed to perform the simple task of recording votes in this day and age. The old punch card voting machines are more reliable.
is already labeled Terrorist. The official announcement is at 4:35 pm today.
Slashdot to follow, next week Tuesday at 10:31am.
LOL
Since the start of time there as always been the one buthead who thinks they should be "In Charge" of the world. This is human nature it will not change. People have, and will continue to do what they can to see this come to fruition.. All this information does is prove that we still have power-hungry buttheads today. Hooray for the human condition. I bet you it's the same shit at the next election too. Nothin new, nothing changed, still no-one doing anything about it but bitching.
Sometimes I wonder if Jack Nicolson was right... Maybe we can't handle the truth.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
No no no wait. ..........
No no seriously.
People Didnt know this?
I mean come on, making voting booth touchscreen and computerized. In FLORIDA. Home of old retired people who think computers are fancy calculators?
European Election Observation Mission, Final Report (pdf format).
Even with all the illegal restrictions that Israel imposed on movement in the West Bank and Gaza and most importantly, Palestinian citizens living in East Jerusalem***, the Palestinian elections have a valid paper trail that can be checked as well as having independent, neutral monitors observe how the voting took place.
Does this mean that the Palestinian elections were perfect? Of course not. No election is. However, they made a good faith effort to have as free and open an election process as possible under the occupation conditions. They allowed the monitors full access to every aspect of the vote including the final vote counts.
One would think that if we're trying to spread the benefit of democratic elections to the world we should first start by taking a serious look at our own election process and bring in outside monitors to help us get a handle on this kind of nonsense. There is absolutely no excuse for these kind of activities to take place other than to manipulate election results.
*Investigation into the 2004 U.S. Election
**Palestinian Monioring Group, Israeli Obstructions of the Palestinian Election Process
***Observer Report, Norwegian Assocation of NGOs (pdf format)
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Or, better yet, Given the results here, can we have a do-over?
The sheer incompetence of this administration boggles the mind. Would anyone have voted for Bush 6 years ago had they known:
911 attacks not prevented
Katrina response horrible
Stupid war in Iraq
Top Vote getter in last Iraq election is Islamic Revolutionary Party
Hammas elected in Palestine
Iran pushing ahead with Nukes
the Enron rape of California
Gas prices doubled
Huge never ending deficits
Bin Laden still at large
greater percentage of Americans living in poverty
less people with heathcare
drop in average household income
worldwide derision and hatred of America
secret spying on American citizens
torture
and Americans can be thrown in jail without access to council
etc.
etc.
But if the problems of the world emerge from the apathy, stupidity, ignorance, greed, and hate of billions of people, including ourselves... well, that's a little more difficult to tackle and a little more depressing to think about.
It's only the apathy, stupidity, ignorance, greed, and hate of like tens of millions of people that we need to worry about in this case. Geeze. Try not to exaggerate, ok?
-- dR.fuZZo
That proves it, humans are incapable of using technology such as computers for important events because there's always someone that tries to/does tamper with the technology to tip the balance.
If even the good ole paper ballot can't do it, exactly who thought something as complex (and programmable) as a computer could make any difference ?
Personally I'm not surprised, it was just waiting to happen.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
Flogging a dead horse.
Seriously, you are stuck with the guy. Ride it out, vote him out. Or not.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
Anything besides voting in person welcomes corruption. I think we should have GIANT LCD screens with the tallies on them for your precinct. When you cast your vote. *DING* it shows up.
Hell, go so far as to have a slip of paper pop out with Date:Time: and the VOTE number you were for the candidate.
But again. We want to move away from voting in person. That way voting by the dead and homeless is all the easier.
A few comments.
The voter should *not* get a "receipt", so that he/she can be paid/blackmailed to vote a certain way. However, the machines should produce a write-only-once piece of human (as well as machine) readable output, such as a paper or plastic card with holes punched or permanent OCR ink markings.
The use of a machine to make selections is OK, but under no circumstances should the "permanent" record of my vote be made on a piece of computer storage media such as a hard disk or flash memory card. That is completely insane.
Our elections MUST have an immutable audit trail, while remaining anonymous. Each voter (or a trusted friend/agent in the case of the visually impaired or otherwise disabled) verifies that the physical record of the vote is as intended, then deposits that record in a container kept under watch by multiple parties.
If the votes are tallied by computers (they're good at that), fine. BUT, a physical record is available for recounts and audits of accuracy.
Anybody wanting a system making auditing impossible must be assumed to be up to fraud. No other interpretation makes sense.
Is it too late? Would a voter initiative for auditable voting simply be rejected by the powers that be already put in place, even if favored by 75% of the public in polls? THIS is the gravest issue facing our democracy now, on which the fate of all other issues hang. It is a coup of horrific proportion. (though corporate financing of election campaigns is a close second to be sure)
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
> Given the findings here, can we have a do-over?
Sure. Does November 3, 2008 work for you?
Seriously however, I don't why something like this can't be done:
1) Voter does all the verification stuff to prove they can vote
2) Election judge gives them a blank ballot
3) Voter goes to machine, inserts blank ballot, selects candiates of choice from screen
4) Machine prints out selections on ballot in unambiguous, human-readable manner
5) Voter visual verifies that paper ballot matches their selections.
6) Voter drops paper ballot in ballot box.
We then get:
A) Instantly available results (recorded from the machine)
B) Iron-clad verifiablity (from the printed ballots)
Obviously if there were discrepancies/irregularities the paper ballots would be the binding result.
There are problems with every election on both sides. The Democrats had their share of fraud in the last election. Remember the Seattle fiasco? The same people who are bitching about electronic touch screen voting are the same ones that told us we had to get rid of paper and punchcard ballots.
You've unfortunately fallen into a hole that far too many people do, and it's stolen the thunder out of your argument. This story is about a large number of anomalies in Florida voting machines. You've hyperextended that to "However, I doubt most people *know* the election was fraudulent" and even though I'm of a notion to think that voting machines are a bad idea because of their lack of accountability, I start to tune you out as a conspiracy theorist. There's nothing to say that faults in the voting machines were purposeful, nor that faulty voting machines would have changed the outcome of the election. That's not to say that such things didn't happen, but these are different, unconnected things and the stuff in the article does nothing to prove that they did, so tying them together just shows that you're not using logic properly.
Virg
In the state of Florda elections are run by the counties. Autonomously. Period. The local boards purchase, maintain, and configure the machines for each election. Theresa LePore is a Democrat and one of the most inept of all local election supervisors in the state. Palm Beach county is overwhelmingly Democrat which is why she is still there mucking things up. And why the Democrats selected her county in 2000 as being one of the Democrat supervised elections that were vulnerable to election counting problems. All the election results in southern Florida that came under fire were in Democrat controlled counties. Do you think that if Jeb Bush had tried to intervene before hand that there would not have been Hell to pay? Grown up.
The Supervisor of Elections here in Hillsborough County at the time was Pam Iorio. Also a Democrat, but she ran such a tight ship that no recount would have shown any changes. I voted for Pam Iorio every election that she was in. She was very good at her job and brooked no political shenanigans and she was elected time after time by a vast majority. I cannot vote for her now since she is Tampa mayor and I am in the county.
I think that if I were a Democrat in southern FLorida I would have been insulted as hell by Al Gore and his lawyers and the national Democratic Party who came in and declared everything done by the local Democrats to have been faulty and fraudulent. That old retired Demcrats were too stupid and senile to understand the Democrat designed ballot. That the local Democrat election comittee did not maintain the machines correctly so that the chad was correctly removed. That the local Democrats purchased faulty machines or ones that were too difficult to use correctly. And to have the national press pointing it all out to the world. Just saying.
Too lazy to create a sig...
Junior won fair and square!
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
If we programmed the same way we lie to ourselves about our politics, what would be the result?
If your really worried about the way the elections in ANY country are conducted, run :getinvolved;
I spent a-l-l-l-l election day last, and most of the night standing around in an otherwise abandoned high school auditorium, looking for wall outlets and enough unbroken floodlights to arrange lighting into the evening so we could see what we were writing. I bloody well tallied up all the votes at that precinct, and chased away the OVERWHEMINGLY DEMOCRAT dirtbags and hustlers that were trying to cheat, or trying to pave the way for others to cheat.
That doesn't make me special. It just makes you a willy, flayling whiner.
-J
When the logs of Chicago voting machines get this same kind of scrutiny it will be news. This is ancient and not very useful apocrypha. Roll on paper ballots.
Something like "Who finds out about corruption is irrelevant; who gets to decide what kinds of corruption are "Serious Stories" versus "Tinfoil Hat" material decides the rest."
You've hit on something very interesting here, and at the risk of an aptly-modded OT ramble, I'd like to expand on it.
Do you ever pay attention to those 'News of the Weird' or 'Offbeat News' sections of your local website / newspaper? While some of it is truly in the oddball category, there is something else going on, and it's much more subtle.
From my perspective, many of these 'offbeat' news stories would fall under another category - "News You Did Not Expect To Hear". That is, the rest of the news is 'safe' news - news that you could have expected to hear, based on the ongoing conditioning by all of the other news you've heard recently. The 'offbeat' news is the unsafe news, that was interesting enough to make it to print, but is otherwise not part of the main program.
For instance, a woman might give birth to a 15 pound baby. This is very unusual, and also quite newsworthy. So why is it tagged as offbeat? Perhaps to prevent distracting the news consumer from the latest strife in the Islamic world?
Color me cynical, but the whole concept of 'offbeat' news seems to be about molding public opinion to the viewpoints of the newsmakers (whoever they are).
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
I wonder, do you consider FDR to be the "jackass" who failed to stop Pearl Harbor?
Now that you mention it, FDR, along with General Marshall, General Gerow, Admiral Stark and Admiral Turner, did fail to stop the attack. It was strategically obvious that Pearl Harbor would be the target when (and if!) the Japanese attacked... On December 5, 1941 FDR received the decrypted Japanese declaration of war, and he did nothing about it. The message was never sent to Admiral Kimmel and General Short, the commander in chief & commanding general, respectively, of the pacific fleet. Our jackass-in-chief FDR wanted to go to war on the 'moral high ground,' in the eyes of the public.
But that'll never make it into high school history books. History is written by the winners, and it's common knowledge that we were taken by surprise, and that FDR was (overall) a really swell guy.
Get over it! I am so sick of every week hearing about some other bitching from you sore losers... Start complaining because someone else won and get to work helping our country recover from some of the stupidity of Bush and his predecessor who was equally as horrible.
Erutangis ym si siht.
...of scoundrels is the "Everybody does it" line. That's when you know they're guilty.
Palm Beach is heavily Demcoratic, and run by the Democrats guys
That's not conclusive one way or the other. There would be no less motivation to cheat in a Democratic district than a Republican, as the victory is winner take all state-wide.
Nor does having people who are registered Democrats rule out Republican opportunity. This could be done any number of ways. There's the people who service the machines. The people who have access to the places where the machines are stored. Even if every single one of these people are registered Democrats, it doesn't rule out that they are Republican operatives, or simply mercenaries working for a Republican buck.
Personally, my money's currently on criminal negligence, but I tend to believe the best of people. Logically, I have to accept that once I allow that could happen here, I can't reasonably rule out the perpetrators using the basic tools of criminal conspiracy. Once you admit that it's within the bounds of possibility that certain elements in or allied with the Republicans would try to steal an election, it really doesn't strain the bounds of credibility to assume those people might arrange to place a mole in the office, or to bribe or blackmail somebody working there. It doesn't significantly enlarge the crime.
In fact, if you were to steal the election, the best place to do it would be under the supervision of the opposing party. Naturally, this is all speculation. But if you want a conclusive answer to this question, nothing of this sort should be ruled out.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Giving the findings here, cant some of us just move on with life?
Am I really supposed to believe a posting off a discussion board whose main purpose seems to be selling a book?
It is always Florida with the voting fraud, what about the dead in Chicago and the unprecedented amount of registered voters in Philly?
One doesn't have to be too cynical to see why Florida is looked at and other places are not. Just simply more FUD against the current President.
Like many people I would like to see a perfect voting system. Perfect meaning ever valid vote counts, not just my choice winning.
But I doubt that will ever happen.
Florida is not the only place with voting issues.
That way, W. get's even more votes and the whiny Liberals can have something else to go on about, since, the hunting accident is (and never really was to anyone outside the MSM) a big deal anymore :)
they'd now offer to send UN election observers to the US for 2008 to make sure that such manipulations or alleged manipulations are no longer possible and that democracy is finally brought to every country in the world.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
source-http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/3/172 73/2941
Now, all political sentiments aside, lets not let our dislike for the president slip to accusing him of voter fraud. Almost every president has had allegation of voter fraud (oddly, only Repulicans get it widely broadcast in the media /sarc). The fact that there were problems with the machines mean they should be examined, but does not automatically point to voter fraud. Moreover, to prove that the error's difference would have changed things, you would have to move about 191k votes from Bush to Kerry (Bush won FL by ~381k votes).
source-http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/resu lts/states/FL/P/00/index.html
Now, slightly off topic, it is interesting seeing how the Democrats wanted a win by electoral college in 2004, considering how they considered Bush's win in 2000 'illegitimate' due to his lack of the popular vote. In 2004, Bush had the popular vote, but now the Democrats thought the electoral college was the greatest thing since the redefinition of the word 'is'.
As for me, I'm tired of witch hunts on both sides of politics. Clinton was a good president that enjoyed tomfoolery. Kennedy was too. Bush got us into a war that seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but turned out to be a big mistake. So did Kennedy. Terrorists are the new communists. As far as I know (I wasn't around then, please correct this if i am wrong) Kennedy was never lambasted as much as either president was. I wish we could return to the days where politicians had some respect for general decency.
I'm tired of the partisan bashing. The Democrats want you to beleive that Bush is both a redneck idiot and a brilliant deceptor of the public. I don't buy it. If anything, the President is too honest. When he says something, he really really really does it, no matter how much his opinion poll drops.
I am really proud of my Dominion (VA) though, since we are starting to push back against dirty campaigning. Recently, Tim Kaine won the Governership. The media spun it as Bush's appearance that led to his defeat, but it wasn't. In the month before the election, Jerry Kilgore ran a slew of ads that unjustly made Tim Kaine look like the devil, and Tim Kaine played a fair game, which led him to victory. (Admittedly, I have no valid sources but 'all my friends' and my step-sister that worked for the Kilgore campaign) I really wish this sentiment would pick up throughout the country.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
st doing everything possible to make sure that votes in a democracy are fairly counted.
This space available.
Diebold
.
I think I'll buy "C++ Programming for Dummies" and faxes a quick resume to Diebold
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
I wonder how high the error rate is for paper ballots? Paper ballots don't tally themselves.
I thought logging Sequoias was illegal?!
A witty
Programming Voting Machines isn't exactly designing rockets, you know. When the task is fairly simple, any anomalies require for explanation either an escalating (and unlikely) level of incompetence...or malfeasance. It's not crazy to say: these machines are made to count and for this simple task they fail depressingly often. WTF? Now, given no direct evidence of specific malfeasance that obviously benefits one party over another, conspiracy theories are premature. However, starting to look in this direction based soley on the failure rate is not as crazy as you make it out to be.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
The number of votes cast on election day totaled a bit over 100,000,000. That's roughly equal to the number of ATM transactions that occur daily.
Before anybody rolls their eyes when they hear about these stories and hide behind the mask of partisianship, ask yourself how big a deal it would be if ATM's experienced even a fraction of the errors that were experienced by these voting machines. Just take one case - 4000 votes in North Carolina - and imagine if 4000 ATM transactions in one state suddenly withdrew money from customers' accounts instead of depositing.
Just imagine the chaos for the offending bank. It would be a nightmare. Now imagine the scale of error with the voting machines, which has software that is far less complex. The errors are massively significant. It should be the #1 topic on every newscast until it is resolved. BUT - people just don't care about it because:
- They don't see it as important as if their ATM transaction choked - they don't see it as their 'money' disappearing
- They don't care about the outcome or are happy with the result. If the ATM suddenly deposited an extra $100 in people's accounts, how many people would speak up? Some, but not everybody. And if it doesn't happen to you, it's not YOUR problem, right?
- They are lazy and don't care.
- People in the US today give famous people or politicians more hell over who they sleep with than what they do or say. People will read every last bit of Jessica Simpson coverage but couldn't care less what the deficit is or why it even would matter.
- People believe the hype, or only listen to what they want to hear. Too many people listen to EITHER Rush Limbaugh OR Michael Moore, so they only get 50% of the story. If the party in power is the one doing the crime, then those supporters ignore it. And vice versa.
Kerry won that county by more than 20%! So it doesn't matter!!!
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
I came across a site that advocates using a touch screen that produces a paper ballot and then running that paper ballot through an optical scan. The count on the two machines must match at the end of voting. The layout is found at http://www.2pv.org/. To date, IMHO, this is one of the more innovative ways of complying with HAVA regulations, have a paper trail, and verify the electronic count. The only bad thing is that it is more expensive and no one offers a system that uses this schema.
... the last refuge of tyrants.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
... is IF the various anomalies were removed from the count, would it have made a difference? Would there have been enough invalid vote to give Kerry a victory?
One of the more heinous human tragedies occured on September 11, 1973.
The democratically elected government of Chilean president Salvadore Allende was overthrown in a coup d'etat by General Augusto Pinochet. The new regime killed thousands of dissidents and other "enemies of the state".
The reason? Allende was a Marxist, and the CIA (and by extension, Richard Nixon) were keen to keep Latin America firmly in the American camp during the Cold War, even if installing fascist dictatorships was necessary.
I'm willing to bet anyone here that we'll attempt something similar in the Palestinian territory, so long as we can keep the Israelis from doing it themselves in some wickedly obvious fashion, like firing a rocket from a chopper, or hare-brained assassination attempts.
Of course, we're far more civilzed at home. We rely on factual information reported in an objective fashion to an educated public.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Given the findings here, can we have a do-over?
No liberal bias on this site. It should have been edited out for flaimbait. Wouldn't it be better to focus your energies on improving the voting problems some states are having? Or perhaps look inward as a democrat and figure out why the party 5 of the last 7 presidential elections.
Here are two reasons for no do-over: John Kerry and Al Gore
an ill wind that blows no good
It's not like your vote counts anyways. It is all up to whomever the electoral college decides to accept the highest bid for. The US voting system is so flawed, there is no reason it should not go to popular vote, well except those are fixed as well.
Cheesy Movie Night
Just flip a coin next time. You'll get yourselves a politician whichever way it goes, and you know they're gonna screw you anyway.
No. The results of the election have been legally certified, and by the laws of this nation, Der Bushmeister won it.
This begs many questions, however.
1. Are these anomolies the leftovers of malicious tampering or explainable via innocent happenstance?
2. Regardless of the answer to #1, has digital voting solved anything?
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I'm a democrat and voted for Kerry, but I think the only people who see election fraud in the 2004 elections are people who really want to see it.
It seems to me that the "anomalies" that get reported are, by and large, statistical noise. It's nothing new... it's just that the results have received an unprecedented amount of scrutiny since the incredibly close 2000 election.
can we have a do-over of the last 6 YEARS?
More accurately, "Gore"'s "mistake" was being lied about constantly in all major media outlets, even by nominally liberal commentators. Of course, that wasn't his doing, so you can't really call it a mistake.
Even with that endless stream of lies, he almost won.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
These are all great questions. Now that this information is out in the public, the public can hear the facts and decide what they think. Criminal charges can be filed if it appears there is a conspiracy. If there is no conspiracy, then a court of law can decide that after careful scrutiny of the evidence.
I don't understand why this information was withheld from the public for so long. If nobody has done anything wrong, they have nothing to fear. If it was due to hardware issues, the public should also be made aware of the fact that their voting systems are unreliable so they can push their government representatives to take corrective action if it is the will of the people.
If you look at my other follow up, you will find that there is previous evidence of DEMOCRATIC cheating in multiple elections in that county. In the two previous presidential elections.
I am not saying that anything is sure, but in Palm Beach County, if there is cheating, bet on the Demcorats to be doing it.
Maybe you should read an introductory sociology textbook. There are indeed methods more exact than yours.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Every day almost we hear about another computer exploit, some drive by malware download, another botnet, etc, all so some scumbags can make a few thousand dollars. That's it, a few thou. It's easy enough to understand the motivation, and easy enough to see that they use unsecured computers and peoples naievete to accomplish this task.
Now, just imagine,if the scumware guys OWN the computer that you and everyone else uses. Now imagine the scumware guys are looking at CONTROLLING THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT by OWNING that computer.
How much is that worth? Really, how much motivation is there to control TRILLIONS of dollars, not thousands, TRILLIONS and the largest war machine on the planet? Do you see any incentive there, or is all this just another series of "coincidences"? Coups don't happen around the world all the time? Where's the magic document from the truth fairies that says the US can never fall to coup plotters?
Now look at the track record so far of what we have found out these folks, how many lies have been drug out of them? How many people have perished based on the lies, how may large corporate insiders connected to the government have profitted immensely?
You can't do the math on this? What's it going to take, them coming on TV and just announcing it? You fail to be able to take into account all the other information out there? This latest is just another large chunk of evidence, look at ALL of it together, what do you see? I see some serious crimes right up into treason,and the probable perps with the clear motive and the clear opportunity.
Less than 50% of the electorate voted. So the majority of the people didn't care enough about who won to voice their opinion. May as well have had a Supreme Court Justice flip a coin.
The Democratic and Republican Parties are both corrupt beyond redemption. Until there's some real third party choices, it's just a choice between turd #1 or turd #2.
- Jasen.
I would never agree to any receipt that could be used by itself to invalidate the concept of the secret ballot. If I have a receipt that can tell anyone who sees it how I voted, there is nothing to stop my boss from forcing me to vote HIS way instead of my own. We went through this arguement more than a century ago.
Fortunately, with today's technology it IS possible to give a person a receipt that verifies that they voted, and to retain a record in the voting machine itself which, when matched with that person's reciept can reconstruct the individual vote, but which by itself does NOT reveal for whom one voted. THIS is the technology we must adopt to avoid re-fighting the battles of a century ago.
She's a democrat and she lost her 2004 re-election using the same system. Voting is done at the local level. Is this post trying to imply that this was some "vast right wing" operation to get Bush elected? GET A LIFE and take your favorite organizations motto: MOVE ON! Get over it
Hmm... that's interesting. One thing I've noticed is a difference between the right and the left on what the "nightmare" scenario on election day is. You've just described the right's nightmare: the wrong person casts a vote. The left's nightmare is that someone shows up who should be able to vote and is not allowed to. I've just always found that interesting -- people on the right are often willing to accept valid voters being denied to prevent unauthorized votes; people on the left are often willing to accept unauthorized votes to prevent a valid voter being denied. I've just found that character difference runs very deep.
All's true that is mistrusted
With extensive reading, I can state that the conclusion you draw is totally WRONG about FDR and Pearl Harbor.
1. It was NOT strategically obvious that Pearl was a target. It was strategically obvious that the Phillipines were. And McArthur parked the B-17s wingtip to wingtip, only making it worse. In fact, strategically, attacking Pearl Harbor was about the worst thing the Japanese could have done. If they had not, we would have executed plan Orange. And gotten our butts kicked in the Phillipines.
2. Kimmel and Short were made scapegoats for failed policies above them. The got the notice of imminant attack AFTER the attack.
3. The declaration of war came in AFTER the attack, which is part of what pissed us off.
So, maybe you better go back and study again, cause you are the kind that makes up these BS conspiracy theories.
If your goal was to rig an election, would you screw with most or even all of the voting machines, thus maximizing your chances of getting caught, or would you rig the minimum number of machines necessary to achieve your goal?
In 2003, I made a video for EFF on how break diebold's security through obscurity password scheme on their election management software (GEMS). This results in the ability to change election results and remove any logs of doing so.
t s/DieBoldGems.avi
http://www.michaelaiello.com.nyud.net:8080/exploi
This news does not suprise me at all =(
Stop trying to save time, if these things even do save time overall. Have everyone make an X in the right spot. Then count the ballots. Heck use the "colour in the bubble" machine readable thing, but always, always make everything human countable in hard copy.
Schwarzenegger's appointed Republican Secretary of State has recertified Diebold's ballot machines in California, despite their being barred. California prosecuted Diebold's executives for lying to the state about their rigged machines. But of course, Schwarzenegger's on the ropes, so he needs those machines to "terminate" the opposition.
--
make install -not war
Well, the People's Republic of California used those dumb punchcards for YEARS and nobody every whined about hanging or dimpled chads there. Oh and while we're on the subject, Clinton didn't win the popular vote but happened to win enough electoral votes to get elected. Can we have a do-over for that too?
And this is why we in the UK use nice bits of paper that you write a X on against your choice.
No chads.
No computerised fun & games.
Now if only we'd stay that way.
--- This meme is memory intensive
SYSTEM:
With this type of system, necessary ballot changes can take place up to two days before the election without major costs currently assosiated with standard paper ballots. It also ensures a voter and auditor verifiable paper trail with IMMEDIATE ALARMS when something goes wrong. Vendors can still bid on implementation, hardware (within exacting failsafe specification) and support.
Who's with me? Respond to this comment. If I see enough people willing to put in time and/or some cash in a yet to be named non-profit/non-partisan organization to FORCE THIS CHANGE, I will start the process of building the org and launching the movement! (US only, please).
Randy
These problems were with voting machines controlled by a Democrat, in a predominatly Democratic county. Asking "giving the findings here can we have a do over" is to admit that your side cheated and lost so they should have another shot at winning. Why dont you try that at Begas. When you loose the black jack hand admit to cheeting on that hand then demand a do over since cheating occured and you lost. See how far that gets you.
...for one vote per person. let's get rid of this "representative democracy" crap and go 100% digital. Senators? who needs 'em President? no longer necessary every man, woman and child gets a "vote-O-Matic" and casts 1 vote for EVERY issue.
40 machines out of 4313 possible machines (less than 1%) showed any anomolies. So if someone WAS trying to rig votes, they sure weren't doing a very good job. And nobody has made any representation if there was any evidence of either candidate being favored or if the errors were random.
Granted, I think every effort should be taken to ensure transparency of the process, but people who immediately assume there is some vote fraud conspiracy need to get out more.
Do you think the temptation to cheat would be more or less easy to hide with paper balloting? Does having each ballot pass through the hands of multiple (partisan) humans increase or decrease the likelihood of fraud? Draw your own conclusions.
What's really disturbing about this is that blackboxvoting.org is the only organization in the country that's looking in to the technical details of how the voting machines really functioned on Nov 2nd. They have very limited resources, and are mostly focussing on Florida. For this democracy to function properly there should be thousands of groups just like it going over all the data in every precinct in the country.
Yeah...given Kerry's recent rhetoric, he'd get maybe 7% of the vote this time. I'm all for it!
Let me just adjust my tinfoil hat, ahhhhh there we go.
"nor that faulty voting machines would have changed the outcome of the election"
Try telling that to the QA people for an air traffic control systems or something more serious than life and death, somethinggggg, something like a stock exchange. We have systems across a large chunk of the planet that do a very good job at preventing planes and stockmarkets from crashing. People would also get pretty fucked off if the gazzillion dollar lotteries or even the local bookie had "disconnected anomolies".
Maybe it was "fool play" rather than "foul play" but whoever is in charge of running the election should, at a minimum, step aside until the negligence (or otherwise) is investigated with the rigor a technological disaster desrves.
Even if the GP is making heavy use of a "conclusion mat", nobody has "stolen the thunder", it's just can't be heard over the noise of the media steamtrain as it endlessly wizzes past.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Now, I should not feed the trolls but:
An election has to be fair, it has to be so without any posibility of error. Errors have been proven. If these errors can be blamed on the democrats lock them up for treason, if these errors can be blamed on the republicans lock them up for treason. A democracy cannot accept a single error in the voting process.
Freedom or George Bush
Because it's interesting and entertaining, but utterly irrelevant.
Color me cynical, but the whole concept of 'offbeat' news seems to be about molding public opinion to the viewpoints of the newsmakers (whoever they are).
I'd use the word 'paranoid' rather than 'cynical' to describe that concept.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
It's interesting that all the evidence is presented from one site and not corroborated anywhere outside the domain of bbvforums.org. In fact, the only links presented on the article's link are articles saying the claims are groundless.
Unfortunately, this is not evidence. It is speculation. Not even very convincing speculation at that.
The speculations hinges on the argument that a single person could tamper with 35000 ballots in less than fifteen minutes. This is not credible without demonstration. For one thing, I have a ream of paper sitting next to me, and it is closer to two inches thick than one. If the ballots are made from heavy stock (as we do in our part of the country), then the perpetrator would have 70 inches ballots, five feet thick in other words, possibly more. In any case I doubt he could punch more than ten or twenty at a time, even then he'd leave obvious traces of the operation on the bottom several.
By hand, if you practiced, I think you could do maybe fifty per minute, maybe a hundred. In any case certainly you would need several hours to tamper with that many ballots in the manner suggested.
This is not proof that the county Democrats did not cheat of course. The tampering could be done with a specially rigged jig and press for example. But you'd have to do much better than this to be credible, examining the chains of custody of ballots from individual princincts and correlating anamolies to them. All data has patterns after all, even random data. You have to correlate a pattern to something else before it becomes significant.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"Would that include those DIEBOLD machines..."
Nope, these are SEQUOIA voting machines.
Nice try with the troll though, well timed.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
It's interesting that all the evidence is presented from one site and not corroborated anywhere outside the domain of bbvforums.org. In fact, the only links presented on the article's link are articles saying the claims are groundless.
>Extreme Republicans, on the other hand, are most likely in it for personal enrichment.
>They are not going to do something if they will get caught.
What about the ones who think they're not going to get caught?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Or are you just being funny?
0 .html
c ked
Voting machine manufacturers ARE producing ATMs. The CEO of (Diebold) is the very same that vowed to deliver Ohio to GW.
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/atms/default.htm
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59874,0
http://www.gristforthemill.org/010418diebold.html
http://www.wanttoknow.info/051221votingmachinesha
There are some links to chew on. Americans of ALL stripes and affiliations should be OUTRAGED.
If you're a conservative that wants to brush this off - suggestion - Imagine Hillary Clinton's best friend becomes CEO of say... Diebold. Scared yet? Or are you consistant in your lack of outrage?
Security has two aspects to it: prevention and detection.
A well designed electronic system is probably going to be better, maybe even much better, at prevention.
But a paper system wins hands down at detection of fraud.
You need both, but arguably detection is the ultimate prevention. Every form of prevention can be defeated, given enough time and incentive. It's detection that denies you that time and balances the incentive.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I mean, given their history, we can't really trust the logs to be accurate.
In the last election you had Democrats suing the Green Party, suing the Libertarian party, to suspend them from participation in elections, and openly and proudly admitting that it was "on a pretense, so those parties don't steal our votes". You have the Democrats sponsering a new law that would make all political funding based on seats in congress (meaning that political parties that don't have seats on congress could not legally accept any funding, essentially making any party other than Democrats and Republicans illegal). You have the Democratic party openly telling it's members to go to Green Party primaries and to sabatoge candidate selection.
You have major political parties openly and proudly commiting major political fraud in order to, what they admit openly, to supress people's choices in the election. Yet, people are worried about a few anomolies in a couple of electronic voting machines?
Lets just get this straight, the people who concerned about this aren't concerned about protecting Democracy... they are concerned about helping the Democratic party. They think Diebold are Repbulican supporters and will give votes to Republicans, and they want to protect the Democrats.
If these people were REALLY concerned about Democracy, they would be outraged as the massive and open voting fraud, gerrymandering, canditate and voter intimidation, and outright sabotage perpetrated by their own party.
Don't get me wrong, I am sure the Republicans would do the same evil things in a different situation... but it is the Democrats who are worried that third parties will harm them, because no-one really likes the Democrats, they just vote for them because they hate the Republicans more. The Democrats lost to Bush the first time because of Nadar and the Greens, and they are worried that third parties will "steal" (as they like to call it) the anti-Bush, anti-Republican vote.
Require handing out paper receipts to voters, and make the information on those receipts intelligible to voters so they can easily understand what that receipt means and can compare it to their intent. After all, an unintelligible receipt that the voter can't understand is no better than no receipt at all.
Then set up a table just outside of the polling station, offering to purchase those receipts at the rate of $10 for every receipt showing Democratic party-line voting and $5 for any receipt showing a vote for a Democratic candidate. Have a big sign on the table saying "We'll buy your vote!". Call the press, which is probably unnecessary. Wait for the firestorm to erupt as you overtly demonstrate thwarting the democratic process in an entirely legal manner. You're not REALLY buying votes, you're buying receipts! For extra fun, wear an AFL-CIO jacket while doing this.
Or let's say that the receipt is gobbledygook. Scan the receipt with an imager and have a laptop "decode" what the data means and provide a varying arbitrary value for the receipt. People would think you managed to crack the receipt code and are paying based on how they actually voted. That might ignite an even more significant firestorm.
What a hoot.
The fact that there are a hundred thousand errors in one county is the problem. It is mostly irrelevant whether the errors were intentional or not. This error rate is simply unacceptable. If such a rate occurs across the whole country wherever voting machines were used (and maybe it did? Who knows, we don't get access!), then the whole election is a sham, intentional or not.
If the contracts for these machines were assigned to companies required to open their hardware and software to public scrutiny, perhaps these errors would never have made it into an actual election. At the very least, one would no longer be able to raise the spectre of tampering.
We have the motive and opportunity, surely. What we lack is the crime.
Now, our prime suspect is known to own a collection of clubs, any one of which could have caused the injury which relieved our victim of his mortal coil. Unfortunately, our victim was found battered to death at the bottom of a cliff. And this particular individual has been known to drink himself into a stupor while standing on the edge of said cliff. And there was no doubt he was shit-faced as ever when he met his fate.
Until we find the club with the victim's blood and hair on it, we don't have a crime, much less a case.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"are being rather blatantly racist."
What race do people from UAE belong to?
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
n/t
Boy I'm sure glad we never had any voting fraud by Republicans or Democrats before these new-fangled electric votatron tabultors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_J._Daley -S
Pray tell, then, did you happen to vote for that very same dude who just "hijacked" your party? You sound entirely reasonable and of perfectly sound mind, yet you imply that you (and countless other of your "majority" of republican voters) didn't recognize this fact before the last election? Oh, I guess it really wasn't perfectly 100% spelled out for you in the first four years, but now, a scant year and a half later, it's all so clear to everybody now.
Many republicans are playing this sympathy game about being duped by the party. Well, these very same folks who argue about what the founding fathers wanted don't even realize that most of the founding fathers hated the concept of political parties in the first place, for this very reason; they knew you always ultimately get these polar opposite extremes before the pendulum swings back toward the center.
So, poor you with your hijacked party. You don't propose to take it back by some sort of recall do you? No, just quietly sit back and let it happen, pretending to be oblivious. Some of us voted for Kerry for the sole express purpose of attempting to defeat your party's hijacker. We saw it coming; why didn't you? Why didn't Limbaugh or O'Reilly? Are they still supporting that "21st" hijacker we have in office?
Ultimately the sympathy play will lead to another, more sane, republican being groomed for 2008. And I can hear it now, how they'll all say how this person is so much better, so much more moderate than the current fraudster. And will republican voters buy it? You bet they will, in the name of redefining the party.
All of these are, of course, rhetorical questions, so no need to reply. However, I would ask you to consider your party's direction very, very carefully before the mid-term elections. Convenient how you'd like to divorce yourself from your own party, as convenient, after the fact. But republicans let this happen, and I for one place the blame squarely on them.
Confidence and complacency in your democracy might well be the worse threat to democracy. Oh yeah, and guys clothed in rags living in caves on the other side of the world.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You know as well as I do that this isn't so. All of their activities work to show that GWB should not have been elected. Sure, they have been careful not to say this, but it's the little secret we all know. LETS BE HONEST, to insist that t this is not so is disingenuous.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
"tinfoil-hatism is the only rational approach."
That was really funny. I think you're serious, but it was still funny.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
A democracy cannot accept a single error in the voting process.
If you are suggesting that we cannot accept any errors in the voting process then we better go back a couple hundred years and start again. There is near zero probability that any election we've had is error free. It is much too big a process with too many people involved. The key is to make sure that the errors are small enough to keep from affecting the entire election.
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means
Every liberal in the world thinks Bush and Co. are the biggest idiots in the world. Yet they also believe they are smart enough to stage an elaborate take over of the US election using computerized voting machines in Florida.
I can't wait until after the 2008 elections, and us Republicans can return to the days of conspiracy therories against the Clintons. Ah, good times.
I've read TFA but didn't see the conspiracy information. If this were a republican plot, then all of the suspicious votes would have been for Bush. The report doesn't say who the erroneous votes were for. That information would prove conspiracy or not. That's key information that wasn't in the report.
However, conspiracy aside, even if all those errors were "just" computer errors that still tends to invalidate Sequoia's machines and the election results that relied on them.
> An election has to be fair, it has to be so without any posibility of error.
nice ideal, would be good to have no errors, would be much better to be fair, but thats not realistic.
The goal of voting in the US has always been acceptable error. No recount of any size has ever come out exact, if I did, it would raise serious questions.
hand recount of paper is expected to be 0.83% error. computer scanning recount is down to 0.56% error. That is acceptable error, that does not qualify as "no error". (numbers found from google searches)
now if acceptable error = fair, then ok were done, US elections are OK.
but fair would imply equal chances, equal opportunities given to all candidates, again a nice ideal, a practical impossibility.
I didn't see any numbers in that report (well except the 70,000 errors) that might indicate the machines were worse than any other ballot machines, yet.
Maybe that is why blogs are getting so much attention these days.
Even if conflicts of interest are rampant regarding voting machines or media, let us avoid getting distracted by accusations and focus on simple solutions attractive to all voters.
Accuracy in vote-counting and journalism are important to everyone regardless of political affiliation.
Vote with your wallets.
If a voting machine maker also makes ATM machines, boycott the banks that use that manufacturer. Write a letter to the CEO of the bank to let them know why you are closing your accounts and moving to a different bank (even if you only had $5, consider the fees banks earn off your activities and the impact if many thousands of customers doing this).
If a "tv news program" is misleading or presenting factually incorrect information, then write down the quotes and send them to the advertisers to let them know you are boycotting their products until the advertiser takes action. Instead of harping on your imagined "bad intentions" of the journalists, just focus on the lack of proper fact-checking and how sponsors are encouraging bad reporting if they ignore quality--ask if the advertiser also ignores quality of their products in the same manner they ignore quality of journalism they sponsor. Associate the poor quality of journalism to reflect poor quality of sponsors' advertised products.
Take similar action with print media by cancelling your subscriptions and contacting the advertisers.
If you are giving your money to companies that support bad journalism or innaccurate voting machines, then you are part of the problem. All it takes is 30 minutes a day to make this country better for all voters.
Given the seemingly endless series of negative things that have come out in recent times I don't find this surprising.
Consider the sources for the 'negative things': New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NBC, Slashdot ... Do you contend that none of these institutions have an ax to grind? There are other more reliable sources for news and commentary. Check them out.
How does this make slashdot part of a vast liberal conspiracy?
Slashdot collusively propogates the dishonesty of the old media and suppress balanced debate of issues.
How does not approving of the current US administration automatically make anyone a right-wing liberal?
(left-wing liberal) It doesn't. But the news media does far more than that. They actively impede the administration's efforts and provide comfort and support for our enemies. The same enemies (Al-Qaida) called out by most democrats in congress in the Iraq war resolution.
How does anything not make your comment not left-wing flamebait?
My comment calls it as it is. That is honesty.
How does your comment add anything useful to the conversation?
Because I call out politicing disguised as a tech story. That is useful to many readers. The submitter or the slashdot priests could have defused the matter by leaving out the snide barb. But instead they prejudged what should be a non-partisan matter and tried to use it for political advantage. If I want to read left wing propoganda, there are other more honest and appropriate sources.
an ill wind that blows no good
It amazes me how often the term 'conspiracy theorist' is used to dismiss people. The fact is that conspiracies big and small happen all the time. They are uncovered and proven on a regular basis. Whethter it is Richard Nixon, Enron, Arther Anderson, or p2p copyright violators. To think that having a theory on a conspiracy makes you a nut is silly at best. The question is whether there is enough evidence to warrent the theory, and whether the suspected crime makes any sense to have commited.
By definition, to not believe in conspiracies would mean that you don't believe illegal p2p filesharing takes place. So, lets see who seems more logical.
Person A: Believes that a machine who's design should be extreamly simple consistantly makes errors in favor of the group who is most adament about using them indicates likely fraud.
Person B: Believes that illegal p2p fileshareing does not happen.
(Now, if your going to argue that you DO believe that p2p filesharing exists, then you too are a 'conspiracy theorist', and your post becomes totally nonsensical.)
ANY voting system, whether electronic or not, *NEEDS* a redundant verification system. Electing the next leader of ANY nation, let alone one of the most powerful on EARTH, *REQUIRES* a verification system so we can feel as though the right person was chosen.
1) Paper reciepts
2) Third-party, independent logging systems (a website to enter a code/checksum which was calculated by the voting machine which printed it as well as your choices individually entered to tally and check against voting machine logs)
Shit. I am so scared that somehow, either intentionally or by mistake, the wrong president was elected...and many major decisions were made by the wrong person.
How can this world afford to gamble on such a blatantly broken voting system? How did we allow this?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I'll bet this is only the tip of the iceberg. Electronic voting machines available today were practically built to be rigged, and they're built by companies run by and closely associated with people that have very little interest in maintaining the integrity of the democratic process.
Recounts? No recounts, I want the poll run all over again. Paper only, this time.
And he's got a track record for comedy gold, too. Check out his past comments: he's called the entire world outside the US "target coordinates," and he thinks it'd be great if the US Air Force bombed Al-Jazeera! How AWESOMELY FUNNY is this guy? What a crack up! What a cad! Mod him UP, baby!
Waaaaaahhhhhh!
Enough already. Concentrate on getting the idiots out instead of crying over the past. My children behave better.
Out!
This really needs to be said to all of the conspiracy theorists out there, and of course the parent post is 100% correct
The next pasture is always greener
unfortuantly due to the fact that the public does not elect the president, we infact vote for electors who vote for president, they cannot, since flordia already selected it's electors, and submitted their vote, the only way to get rid of bush would be to impeach him or for him to become unable to perform his duities (read the constitution, for clarification) so, unless you can link him directly to fraud he is in there untill the next election
Bush is an idiot, and couldn't personally hack a Diebold voting box even though a chimpanzee could.
But he has powerful backers who don't give a shit about what will happen 50 years from now because they are rich enough to protect their own families and ride out anything bad that happens. Saudi family, "I'll give you Ohio" Diebold, evil Cheney, evil Rove. BushCo has a strong record of cronyism, both as a recipient (those companies he was gifted and failed, the national guard schitt), and as a giver (Energy company meetings, Pharma-friendly health care reform, FEMA's Brown, Harriet Myers, and way too many to mention).
Starting the Iraq war took a single-mindedness to invade Iraq. It took a lot of propoganda, funded by the taxpayers and thought up by Rove et al. It required hammering the CIA for shreds of evidence to support their wish, and ignoring all the analysis that Iraq was NOT a threat to the US. Outing Valerie Plame, lieing to the UN, more propoganda to frenzy Americans into a war fever, lieing about the costs, lieing about the insurgency and the possibility of civil war. More propoganda. Politically based classification and leaks.
This was idiotic. Iraq is worse off than before, and America is worse for the change. We have 17,000 dead and wounded soldiers, the Army is seriously weakened, our great-grand-children will have to pay back the debt for this war. There are now MORE terrorists, with better reasons to hate America and Christians.
Does any of this affect Bush? Rove? Cheney? Fox News? Only if they cared about Americans. Their own families will be fine. Their own families will always have roofs over their heads, excellent health care, and very rich contacts.
Yes, they are idiots, and also crafty. It doesn't take James Bond skills to stage an "elaborate" take over of a US election when the voting machines don't have paper records. Just knowledge of which few precincts to do it in, getting your political contacts to approve the machines, and enough money to the right hands. Which are they missing?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
neither Bush NOR Kerry are options in the new election.
Government IS the problem.
Perhaps we should vote on stone tablets or bricks to make that especially hard?
Oy... as if we didn't already have enough problems with senior citizens who can't seem to push a pin through a piece of paper!
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Most Republicans would rather have a hopefully salvageable Republican administration in charge than a neo-socialist Democratic one. ...the Democrats have become a new socialist party...
The current Democratic party is Socialist, to the extent that they favor using public money to provide services to people that private companies could have provided - like health care, education, construction, retirement benefits, etc.
The current Republican party is Facist, to the extent that they favor using public money to benefit large corporations and their leaders, and they collude with the media to keep the public in a misinformed frenzy.
I'll take Democratic Socialism over Republican Facism ANY day.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Damn right a Democrat in the right place can fix the election using these voting machines as well as a Republican!
All those idiots (including dozens of posters here) that say "this is those liberal silly Democrats whining because they lost" should wake up and realize this is not a left/right issue!
Then again, I feel these posts may be an attempt by those interested in having a fixable election trying to kill any reform by trying to make people believe it is an issue only for "crazy liberal conspiracy theorists".
I don't know, every time I tune into Air America (Progressive Radio - "The left just got louder") I hear a lot of agitated liberals
The rest of your ad hominim bashing aside, any influence Air American might have has been severely restricted, in part by the FCC's deliberate machinations in getting broadcasts shut down (or licensing delayed) in various large markets, and in part by their own meager funding (relative to the Right Wing Talk radio stations) and inability to stations with a strong signal.
Case in point: Chicago. Air America barely reaches Schaumburg before fading out due to weak signal strength. WLS Radio (a bastion of Bush-loving extreme rightism) can be heard in Denver on a good night. Guess which one has a bigger impact on people's views and opinions, regardless of the merit of their message.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Before the election, when people talked about the potential for fraud with electronic voting, it was obvious that the only 'check' on the system was the exit polls. If they consistently went in a different direction than the official results, that said something fishy was likely to be going on.
Well, in Florida, that's exactly what happened.
Now, that doesn't mean the election was definitely stolen, but it's a pretty good indication that the chosen method of vote tallying is problematic. No audit trail and results out of sync with the next best way to measure them. In that light, what's a conspiracy theorist to do? Can you blame them?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I protest! Those statements were taken completely out of context 7;^)
an ill wind that blows no good
I opt for locking up all of the Diebold systems for treason!
The pattern of date discrepancies does NOT look like "pure machine glitch" (hardware issues like a CMOS battery failure or corruption) and also doesn't look like the possible result of an OS bug.
The way they're mostly "clustered" in a limited date period of Oct. 13th - 20th of the correct year says to me "human intervension". It's not "randomized" the way most computer glitches are.
Next: by way of Jeremiah Akin, Riverside County elections staff have said that the PS/2 keyboard port on the back of each touchscreen terminal is used for, among other things, "to change the date and time".
We know from the logs on the serial numbers of the machines affected that the dates were accurate during the "logic and accuracy test" typically performed up to a month before the election.
OK, let's assume the Riverside folks are right about the keyboard being required for manual date/time changes.
Standard practice in the elections biz is to do the L&A then shut the machine down and DON'T mess with it until election morning. This is basic across all voting machines and has been since the lever days going back to the 19th century.
If the date was messed with by a human with a keyboard between the time of the L&A and the time of the election, well...what the holy hell were they doing? Once the keyboard is in you can tweak the boot order in ROM, loading new code off of new media, or maybe individual programs. (We know little about the OS on these but the boot ROM system is basically same as any laptop.)
In other words, it's not that radical a guess to say that somebody was up to something no good and the date weirdness was just a side effect.
If they were doing a very serious hack involving loading new code, it's possible that what they did hosed the date and they needed to reset it by hand...and in 40 or so cases they forgot that part?
Under this hypothesis the range of dates from the 13th to the 20th is maybe the time the "midnight black hat crew" spent touching each machine. The number of days involved is about right.
Again, this is speculation. We need the manuals on these things to understand the date function in detail. And the process by which new code or data is loaded, probably via PCMCIA card.
We need to replicate ALL these various errors and figure out how they happened, what could cause them and whether or not they're "pointers" to deeper problems, whether that's just "bad gear" or somebody actually loading a vote-shaving routine of some sort.
Jim March
Black Box Voting staff
http://blackboxvoting.org/
On a related note, don't bother writing to my private email unless you actually want to engage in conversation. I don't have the time or interest to respond to hate mail all day.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Shoot the messenger, everything in your perfect country is fine.
Go back to sleep, or work, or to taking your meds.
Take your pick.
"Freedom and Justice for All" is a registered trademark of The United States Govt Inc. Not available in all areas.
Any channel that has to remind you that they're "real journalism, fair and balanced" every hour is neither fair, balanced, nor real journalism.
You try to sound profound but your words add up to nothing. Fox News' slogan is a lot less pompous than the Owellian "All the News That's Fit To Print".
an ill wind that blows no good
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They point at the original data here:
8 .html
/Y C:\
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/662
That's approximately 65,000*40==2,600,000 records, most of which are vote records, but which also contain error indications. Unfortunately, becuase these are computers, that doesn't at all mean that there are 70,000 miscounted votes. Even *one* unexplained event is enough to call a machine's tally into doubt. No? What about this event:
deltree
Would you hear yourself! "We wuz robbed" my left foot. You were defeated by a small but solid margin in an election no more corrupt than normal - probably less so, given the high turnout and unusually close scrutiny.
Learn the truth: politics has always been a scam at the expense of the regular people since the days of ancient Rome and beyond, in way that goes far beyond party affiliation. Power simply makes hanging onto power easier.
You want less dishonesty in politics? Work to reduce the scope and scale the state. If excess power's there to wield, it will be abused, count on it.
Everyone knows that in a presidential election, your votes don't matter - what matters are the votes cast by the Electrical College.
All of our Pacific fleet was bottled up in Pearl Harbor at a time when we were on alert over the Japanese. That's called putting your eggs in one basket and it certainly made Pearl Harbor the most strategically obvious target. We couldn't defend the Philillipines without Pearl Harbor. They wanted to wipe out our fleet to buy themselves some time. Obviously the Japanese thought it was the most strategic target, despite being a riskier one.
As for Kimmel and Short, they were recently cleared of any wrongdoing.
On the declaration of war, when was the last time we ever declared one? Yet we've been fighting them my entire life. We had the Japanese military codes broken. We knew what was coming. We worked hard to maneuver them into it. What's your explanation for why they bombed Pearl Harbor? Did they just hate us for our freedom? Do you think they really thought they could take us? They were backed into a corner and they fell for the provacations.
Thoughtful comments even if from an AC
India recently had the largest all electronic election in the world. And it was by and large fair. Can we learn something from them?
>All of our Pacific fleet was bottled up in Pearl Harbor at a time when we were on alert over the Japanese. That's called putting your eggs in one basket and it certainly made Pearl Harbor the most strategically obvious target. We couldn't defend the Philillipines without Pearl Harbor. They wanted to wipe out our fleet to buy themselves some time. Obviously the Japanese thought it was the most strategic target, despite being a riskier one.
Wrong. The strategic target Yamamoto was aiming for were the carriers. And they weren't in Pearl now were they? Pearl itself was immaterial, because Yamamoto knew he could not take Pearl or hold it.
>As for Kimmel and Short, they were recently cleared of any wrong doing.
RECENTLY. This boob I was replying to was blaming them for LETTING the bombing happen.
>On the declaration of war, when was the last time we ever declared one? Yet we've been fighting them my entire life.
Iraq, Afganestan, Korea, WWII, Desert Storm.
>We had the Japanese military codes broken. We knew what was coming.
Yes, we had the codes, we knew it was coming eventually, but we expected the attacks in the Phillipines. Thus the orders to McArthur to prepare.
>We worked hard to maneuver them into it. What's your explanation for why they bombed Pearl Harbor?
Yamamoto was after the carriers.
>Did they just hate us for our freedom? Do you think they really thought they could take us? They were backed into a corner and they fell for the provacations.
No, Japan suffered from "Victory Desease". They had not lost a war in their recorded history. Tojo and the Military (except Yamamoto) thought that they could take us. In retrospect, it looks dumb, but that is what they thought.
It's the way the system works.
Democrates have traditionally cheated by multiple voting. When Republicans try to do anything about this they cry 'disenfrachisment'. Hence the continued lack of ID requirements to vote.
Democratic dirty hands also explain the lack of real investigation. Both sides know they don't want their shanannigans exposed.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
These are voting MACHINES.
Machines are SUPPOSED to do the work people used to do. That means we no longer need to vote because we have machines to do the work for us.
It's a convenience.
Gee-whiz, they try to do something nice for you and all people can do is complain about it, next thing you know, people will be WALKING instead of driving their SUV's...
You seem to define it as corporate control of government, it is'nt. In real fascism (Nazi Germany, Axis Italy) government controls corporations. Hence all fascists are socialists not all socialists are open fascists. However all socialist government will become fascist with time.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
All democratic cheating for example. (e.g. Washington state, Minnisota, Wisconson, Ohio).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Idiot. Google and accustions prove nothing but the GP's point.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"Given the findings here, can we have a do-over?"
p opular_vote_county.png e ntial_election%2C_2000
Only if we can also redo the 1992 election where Bill Clinton won with only 43% of the vote. (Clinton NEVER received 50% or more of the popular vote.)
And if there was a "do-over" I think Bush would win again.
Against Gore, Bush won 30 states and if you have seen the county breakdown map he won 75 % of the land mass of the United states. Which means that most places you go in the United states the majority of people support Bush.
If you think things are bad under Bush well.... it could be worse.... we could have Gore...
Bush Recieved more votes two Elections than Clinton did in two elecitons. (20,190,789 votes more than clinton)
Just because the media hates Bush does not mean he has no support. He had over 62 million people vote for him in the last election. I don't agree with several of Bush's policy's but I am sure glad that Gore didn't win.
Highest popular vote received by President:
62,040,610 Bush - 2004
54,455,472 Reagan - 1984
50,460,110 Bush - 2000
48,886,597 GWH Bush - 1988
47,400,125 Clinton - 1996
47,168,710 Nixon - 1972
44,909,806 Clinton - 1996
43,903,230 Reagan - 1980
43,127,041 Johnson - 1964
40,831,881 Carter - 1976
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_election_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presid
gee
did you see the bit where the logs reveal that the voting machines didn't handle dates properly? --the way that the year 2004 comes up as 104? and the possibility that some months were recorded as decrement 1 (10 instead of 11)?
I don't know whether this only indicates a problem in how the log is recorded, or if it has ugly implications for the actual voting process or vote tabulation..
But it's certainly not good from a accountability perspective if you can't trust that kind of basic information in vote logs... - it makes it that much more difficult to determine if machines, or logs, were altered before/after the fact.
And besides all that, it is a rather bad sign if your programmers aren't aware of that kind of date error.
Elections are kinda important things after all.
I didn't read the whole anti-moore article, but I did read this in the introduction.
"This means that while Moore's "facts" are not all false, essentially none of his "arguments" turns out to be true."
This line demonstrates the "problem" everyone is facing. The author is doing exactly the same thing as MM. First "not all false" is another way of saying "accurate", second the authour can not claim the "argument" is false, in the same way that MM cannot claim it is true, both are "opinions".
Off course the "problem" I am talking about is propoganda and won't go away any day soon. I'm an Aussie and I have seen two MM films and read two MM books. I thought Bowling for Colombine was sincere and it raised some excellent "big questions", Angry white men was interesting because it reminded me of many facts that I had forgoten and gave me many more I had not known.
F9/11 and Where's my country were both dissapointing. Not a great deal in the way of new material, basically political propoganda pieces attacking political propoganda. Having said that, there are enough "facts" about the election from MM and others that a reasonable and informed "we the people" could at least demand future votes be auditable and transparent to "we the people" and international observers.
Ignoring the "MM hate America" vs "America hates MM" crap, it is hard to deny he is a commited pacifist and that point of view is always worth listening too, especially when it is in danger of being overwhelmed by gunfire.
BTW: I too don't know the EPCC from a bar of soap, the "google opinion" on the words "EPCC" "ethics" "funding" is that they are funded by the right-wing to promote "jewish-christian values" through foreign policy.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
but what if your wallet is empty?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
And thank God he did too
How can these companies get away with such poor product quality... oh wait it's our government buying from them!
Why do the people put up with rich white men running the country, who give themselves absurd tax breaks while stripping the working classes of adequate medical care, education, etc..., and handing control of ports and what not over to foreign investors? How about somebody who actually represents the masses, not the tiny, rich elite segment of the population? When the choices are the democratic rich or the conservative rich, do voting machines with anomalies and other suspect variables really matter?
There can be no hidden or inaccessible logic in the voting booth.
It is incompatible with anonymous voting by definition.
Or, is blatent liberalism (I'm sorry progressivism) to be confined to public radio where we the American public must foot the bill because people don't really want to hear what they have to say?
I think you're seriously missing the point here.
If public radio is a bastion of liberalism because they can't get ad dollars, that would suggest to me that it is exactly what the people want to hear...just not what the corporations want to hear (or not what they want us to hear, if you prefer).
And even aside from that, your premise is flawed: my local NPR station has plenty of corporate sponsors, it's just that instead of having their own loud, obnoxious ads blare at you every five minutes, the calm NPR announcer reads their names and slogans at the end of each segment.
"Liberal" radio is listener-supported by choice, because it allows them to be independent.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
If you are right, then NPR & PTV would not mind if the federal government cut off 100% of their funding. As for what people want to hear, I highly doubt that. You see a lot corporations try and avoid advertising with anything that could get them boycotted. Obviously, that's completely impossible, so they support what think their paying customers would not be offended by. When they do realise that they have offended a majority of their paying customers, they back pedal and sometimes stop support. It's not that they don't want you to hear it because they really don't care what you hear as long as you buy their product. They want to avoid being associated with bad press. That's why the idea of a boycott can work in the real world.
NPR is still funded by the government. Remove the welfare, and then we shall see how long they stay a float on their own two feet. Air America is just a more recent example of the modern reality that modern day liberal to a big jump of the deep end in crazyville, and the people who actually vote, and spend money in significant amounts (i.e. not your average brainwashed college kid), don't want to hear what they are saying. It's only in the sheltered world of College Campuses where you pay something like $50,000 a year for a moderately decent school to hear these liberals bash Bush instead of teaching their respective subjects.
I will give you a prime example of why I doubt anyone with a brain wants to hear liberals anymore. Talk radio is full of bright college kids calling in and telling their horror stories. A recent story last year went like this. A college female invited a war verteran to come to the campus to talk and probably answer questions (I think it was near an appropriate holiday like memorial day of something), and one professor sent a nasty, hate filled, email back to her for posting it. He even threatened to run her, and others like her, off campus. The professor eventual resigned. There is a summary about it here. There are a lot more stories like this all around the country. Try being a out spoken Conservative Republican on a college campus, and see if the professors don't knock your grades for it. It happens.
My point is this. Liberalism has gone way too far to the left for most people--they've gone insane. When professors try to run students off campus for being conservative and Schools don't allow miltary recruitors on campuses any more while continueing to support the "freedom of speech" rights of professors to spew such aweful trash, the liberal movement has gone to far for the soccer moms and dads of America. They are the ones who vote the most. Why would they want to tune into Air America to listen to more hateful trash? Air America is a joke. They don't offer any real ideas that will improve peoples lives and put money in their pockets. They only bash Bush, and his ideas to make America a better place. Stuff like, "do everything opposite of what Bush is doing" is not an idea that says anything useful. Air America always will be a joke. If the Liberals don't change their values, we are witnessing the death of the Democrat party. That's the real reason the Republicans have had Congress & the Presidency for 6 years now. The Democrats had it that way for the first 2 years under Clinton before the public said no way after Clinton tried to raise taxes.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Such a total load of bullshit.
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
A conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy. That means that if you have one article, or a mound of physical evidence, until the conspiracy is proven, it is a 'conspiracy theory'. If you reread my post, you will see that the problem with your original post(and your follow up post), is that you indicate that a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theorists are crazy. I point out that you in fact are a conspiracy theorist. You do believe that illegal p2p file sharing happens right? If you do, you are a conspiracy theorist. I have yet to meet a single person over the age of 10 who is not a conspiracy theorist.
The problem is that you are using a term, that accuratly describes virtually 100% of the population, as a label to indicate someone with a dissenting view is crazy.
> A conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy.
It would be nice if semantics were that simple, but while the dictionary definition may be so, common usage defines a conspiracy theory as an unsupported theory about a conspiracy. The word most often used to describe a conspiracy theory that can be reasonably demonstrated is "scandal".
> If you reread my post, you will see that the problem with your original post(and your follow up post), is that you indicate that a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theorists are crazy.
That's your bias, soldier. My use of the term follows the directive that it's a conspiracy theory if it's unsupportable by the evidence presented. That doesn't necessarily make it crazy, although crazy conspiracy theories would fall under my definition.
> I point out that you in fact are a conspiracy theorist. You do believe that illegal p2p file sharing happens right? If you do, you are a conspiracy theorist.
This is entirely inaccurate as a definition. Since the term "p2p fire sharing" represents a real-world activity, and "illegal" as it governs that activity has a real world definition (sharing a copyrighted movie over a p2p network, for example, is currently illegal (with no argument as to whether it should be)). Therefore, if I have personally observed a person sharing a copyrighted movie over a p2p network, then I don't have to "believe" it any more than I'd have to "believe" in robbery theories after witnessing a robbery. You've described something that can happen in the real world, and your argument that it's not proven can be countered by my personal experience. More to the point, though, illegal file sharing isn't a "conspiracy", it's an act. You can conspire to do it, but once you've done it, it's an action, not a conspiracy. All in all, I fail to see how this applies in any way to my original agrument, except in the tangent of sharpening the definition of "conspiracy theory", and you've already demonstrated that your definition of the term is very non-mainstream.
> The problem is that you are using a term, that accuratly describes virtually 100% of the population, as a label to indicate someone with a dissenting view is crazy.
The term doesn't accurately describe everyone unless you take your decidedly unpopular definition as more accurate than mine, I didn't use it to label anyone crazy, and I made no comment about whether my view is dissenting (which in fact it isn't). So you miss on all three salient points in this sentence.
Virg
I'll agree that a one-party government is A Bad Thing. Diversity is good, not just for hippies, but because of the improvement through multiple viewpoints, healthy competition, and just a general nipping-at-the-heels.
We used to break up business monopolies for a similar reason. Big companies with too much control stop innovating, and try to retain their power by locking down and digging in. They become bullies, too jealous of their own power.
I'd still be happy if the Democrats took full power for a couple years. I have faith that they'd reverse a lot of the damage (in laws and policies) that the faith-based Republicans have done recently (before they fell under the spell themselves). Not that anyone can magically fix the Iraq debacle, the deficit, the Katrina response, or the environmental damages. But they *could* create good voting protections, return funding for health, science, and education, remove the political propoganda from the science orgs, begin to repair our foreign relations, and air out the overabundance of secrets this administration has created.
On a related note...
"When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong - faster and faster and faster. they put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a bland rush until it's too late." - Frank Herbert, Dune
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
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