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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?
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...
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...
Its an appealing thought. I mean, the alternative is to believe that more than half the country was dumb enough to believe that the same jackasses who failed to stop 9/11 and royally screwed up in Iraq were the best guys to protect us from further terrorist attacks and the best guys to fix Iraq.
There's something very comforting about conspiracy theories in general. I mean, if it's a conspiracy you at least have a chance to fight that; it's just the actions of a few people. 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 must all be the CIA's fault.
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?
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.
[D]o you consider FDR to be the "jackass" who failed to stop Pearl Harbor?
The main quibble here is the use of the word "the", which implies uniqueness. If you read the histories about the Pearl Harbor attack, you'll find that there's general agreement that there was widespread incompetence all along the US chain of command. They pretty much had the evidence in the hours before the attack, but a combination of failure to understand and failure to believe the evidence led to the disaster. But it wasn't one person's failure; it was failure of the entire system to use the information that it had.
This is similar to our current situation with 9/11, Katrina, the Iraq war, etc. George Bush isn't the sole "jackass" responsible for any of these. It's a systemic problem, with incompetence combined with corruption at all levels.
One of the clearest examples is the admission that they had tapes of the perpetrators' conversations days and weeks before the 9/11 attacks. But they didn't have enough translators fluent in Arabic to get them translated in time. This problem existed despite several decades of growing problems with Arabic-speaking radicals, including the earlier bombings of embassies, the Cole attack, and the earlier attempt to bomb the World Trade Center. Anyone competent saw the need for more Arabic translators, and there are at least a million Arabic-speaking Americans who could have been hired.
Further incompetence is shown by the fact that there aren't nearly as many Arabic-speaking Americans willing to do the job now. The widespread anti-Arab attacks and discrimination of the past few years have made sensible Arabic speakers very wary of getting involved with the US government. If you want a clear example of why, google for "Sibel Edmonds". Her story isn't an anomaly; it's a good example of a government agency attacking and driving out out of the people who could have done the most to help. There are a number of other similar stories.
But there isn't a single "jackass" responsible for this. It's a systemic problem that can't be solved by replacing just one high-up jackass.
(The widespread "English only" attitude of Americans is also part of the problem, but that's a different issue.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
And someone who has physical access to the old paper systems can't make votes disappear almost as easily?
I dunno, how exactly would you make 65,000 pieces of paper disappear without anyone noticing? I think you could probably hide a few in your pockets, but what about the next few thousand pounds of votes? You certainly couldn't do it in a few seconds or without a lot of accomplices.
I appreciate you trying to put things in perspective -- but the entire point of electronic voting is that it was supposed to be MORE secure and MORE fraud-resistant than paper. What we have right now is, if anything, the worst of both worlds -- just as tamper-able as old voting machines, with the added bonus of being able to magically change thousands or millions of votes with no more skill than it takes to do a basic card trick.
When an entire city's electorate is represented on a chip the size of a postage stamp, the requirements for physical secrity are much greater than they ever were for what was literally truckloads of paper. And the requirements for auditing and athenticity verification are that much higher.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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!