Slashdot Mirror
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?
Bender: Wait, my cheating unit malfunctioned. You gotta' give me a do-over.
Dealer: Sorry - the house limit is 3 do-overs.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
This is not the democracy you are looking for... They can go about their business...
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yes, it's called "pen, paper and sealed box".
It's massively inefficient, which is a good thing in elections. Efficiency only makes cheating easier.
The only way someone can beat you is by cheating, right?
If there were only one or two instances where people said "Hm, something slightly fishy seems to have happened..." then you'd likely have a point.
But when there are dozens of reports of voting machines not working correctly, and when each and every time the errors seem to be in favor of the party that won... Yeah, I'd say calling shenannigans is justified.
Maybe it'll turn out that the errors didn't actually occur - maybe it'll turn out that the tracking software is fucked, but the votes were counted correctly. Maybe it'll turn out that there was some vast conspiracy. Maybe it'll turn out that the Democrats would have gotten *fewer* votes if the machines had worked properly. Whatever the results, what's important is this:
The machines don't seem to be working correctly when handling a very important task. We need to investigate this, no matter what. It isn't a matter of sour grapes (well, except for some people, maybe) but it IS a matter of finding out what the hell is going on.
Surely you don't think that we shouldn't investigate anomalous situations?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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?
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
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.
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...
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)
While I applaud you for trying to maintain a sane and rational outlook and avoid falling into these conspiracy theories, this issue has far too many coincidences for you to dismiss like that. What would it take for you to change your stance from "no biggie, just a little smoke, no fire" to "fuck me, that's an awful lot of coincidence, maybe I should entertain the possibility that something is wrong here."
Hell, even assuming there's zero conspiracy, just a lot of blunders, should still make you nervous as it still means there's been a perversion of democracy.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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.
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?
So are you saying that we shouldn't develop a system that is auditable and verifyable? that it isn't possible? Diebold said the logistics and cost of having a paper trail kept it out of the design. Funny thing is, as long as I can remember, I've gotten a reciept from the grocery store even when I buy a stick of gum. In fact, I believe reciepts for purchases have been around for a while now. So we can provide a verifyable paper trail and auditable sales record for my stick of gum, but not for my vote? Maybe we should have the IRS run the election. The fact they would make an outrageous claim that a paper trail was unfeasable should pretty much point to some type of malfeasance or at least incompetence. Either way, we don't want them running our vote then. To make matters worse, the largest vote counter, ES&S, has Diebold presidents brother as their vice president. (Bob Urosevich was the president of Diebold. Todd, vice president of ES&S.) These two companies count roughly 80 percent of the votes in the ENTIRE COUNTRY. Even if you don't want to believe fraud of this magnitude could exist in the United States, wouldn't it still be prudent to not put all our eggs in one basket? Especially when the basket is easily broken and constructed so shoddily. Ahhh...what am I thinking....we can trust our government and big business...they haven't lied to us ever. They never make decisions based on whats in their or their friends best interest. Bah ha ha ha ha ha. Enjoy the apathy.
You know as well as I do that this isn't so.
I don't know it at all, and I posit that you don't, either. Everything I've read from Black Box has been focused entirely on the machines, without respect to which race or who won. They've published as much about congressional and even city council races as they have about the presidential election. If you have some evidence that they have a political agenda beyond making sure the voting is honest, cought it up. Innuendo is just a waste of time.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.)
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