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Maryland Governor Wants Paper Ballots
supabeast! writes, "Fed up with all the problems in the state's electronic voting system, Maryland Governor Robert Erlich wants the state to scrap the entire system and return to paper ballots. He's threatened to call a special session of the legislature to change the law to allow paper ballots. What makes this particularly interesting is that Erlich is a Republican — the party often maligned for exploiting flaws in electronic systems — and his attempts to clean up Maryland's voting problems are being opposed by Democrats, the party that is usually complaining about electronic voting!"
Of course, Democrats are more well-known for exploiting paper ballots.
Not a problem: Diebold will get into the pre-checked ballot printing business.
Trolling is a art,
Since he's a Republican, he obviously is trying to reintroduce the butterfly ballot and dupe all the Democrats into voting for Pat Buchanan.
What? A politician who wants verifiably fair elections? There must be some kind of mistake...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I live in Maryland. We are historically a blue state.
The way politics works these days is as follows:
In the red states, the Republican party is crooked as hell.
In the blue states, the Democratic party is crooked as hell.
And for those of you voting for your "team" regardless of the actual issues and goals are doing the country just as large a disservice.
My work here is dung.
Thats why I hate politics. Bipartisanship causes one side to oppose the other simply because they are on the other side. I applaud a republican taking steps to get rid of electronic voting. Democrats are once again showing their incompetance. Instead of a steady effort to hold the current administration accountable for violating the law (according to the supreme court, no less), they are playing devils advocate or passing laws against violent video games. Since when was being a douche bag a requirment for holding office?
Similes are like metaphors
What does it matter which party the politicians are in? They're the same party. You think Democrats wouldn't steal an election given the chance? You think a Republican won't pull a stunt like this to appear honest to get those last few votes to get him in office?
ResidntGeek
Of COURSE there should be a paper trail if not paper ballots.
This
I don't care which party he's in. As long as he's trying to get rid of electronic voting until such time that it can prove itself to be trustworthy, then he's doing the right thing.
This guy's the limit!
Nah, the Democrats have just figured out how to exploit the electronic voting machines this time round. ;)
Thanks for showing your bias submitter. The story stood up on its own without you injecting partisan hackery into the summary. Enjoy the ensuing flamewar
High technology is overrated. Not that I'm a luddite or anything but in a lot of these cases all the technology does is cause more confusion. We've had mechanical voting machines for years and no one's ever complained that they were too hard to use. I mean how hard is it? You pull a lever under the name of the person you're voting for, and when you're done you pull a lever that releases the curtain and registers the vote. No electronics to be seen. We still use them because they Just Work.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
At the very least each polling site should
have enough paper provisional ballots at the ready to complete the election in case of complete machine failure. One of many problems in the recent primaries was an inadequate supply of provisional ballots to cover all the cases that led to their use.
Next step beyond that would be to permit any voter who wants it, to use one of the paper provisional ballots instead of using the voting machine.
...who want fair elections. The issue is not partisan, but fundamental to the proper functioning of a democratic republic. Note that I say that as a registered Democrat. But keep your eye on those who might attempt to squelch this legislation. It is those who have sold out our constitutional freedoms for partisan or constituent gain. And vote them the fuck out of office. Please?
I think the proposed opinions of the parties reflect who's currently in power more than anything else. The people who won are suspect of gaining from election misconduct; the people who lost are suspicious of the system. That said, having a voter-verifiable trail (with the paper ballots being the 'official' votes) is certainly the most secure way to go. I'm not sure that the current voting machine technology actually gives efficiency gains (there are so many technical problems in maintaining the machines and running them on election day), but persumably in the future that would improve, also as people become more used to computers. It's true that it's difficult to forget Diebold's CEO promising to deliver the election to the Republicans. The most scary part for me is that the voting machine is a general-purpose computer with no cryptographic hardware. For a non-citizen it's amusing to note that an average ATM is probably better designed than a Diebold voting machine.
It's easier to make accusations of cheating when you lose instead of accepting responsibility. This is one of the reasons I hate politicians so much. "Oh, we lost... So the other guys MUST be cheating!" Go home to your mommies.
Love sees no species.
And this goes for all political parties.
Generally the second (and third, etc) placed party in a particular area will be campaigning on 'good' causes, to make their candidates look wonderful and pristine and perfect.
However once in power most politicians show their true colours.
And there are the odd few politicians who are in it for the right reasons, to run the country effectively on behalf of the citizens of the country. These rare individuals should be hailed.
Flamebait article ad impressions, 650,000
Total comments by 8PM, 650
Negative replies moderated as troll or flamebait, 65%
The politics of slashdot. priceless....
"Direct threats require decisive action. " Dick Cheney
Democrats fighting to keep it? Ack!
Cognitive dissonance overload in progress. Reaching critical levels...
Head Splat!
and his attempts to clean up Maryland's voting problems are being opposed by Democrats, the party that is usually complaining about electronic voting!"
As a Maryland Democrat, I don't think you understand. We aren't the party that is usually complaining about electronic voting; we are the party that is usually complaining. PERIOD.
/I just calls 'em likes I sees 'em
//I complain about the ICC, too!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Lets get this guy 10billion votes for president.
that summary is freaking retarded. I'm no republican, and I'm no democrat either. whether a person belongs to a party has nothing to do with it. There are jerks, morons, and thieves in both parties. america needs a third and fourth party. this two party system is a joke and stupid.
I find this fascinating, do you have any sources so I can research this further?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Please do not pretend that republicans somehow have a monopoly on trying to rig elections.
Two words for you... Cook county
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
"What makes this particularly interesting is that Erlich is a Republican -- the party often maligned for exploiting flaws in electronic systems -- and his attempts to clean up Maryland's voting problems are being opposed by Democrats, the party that is usually complaining about electronic voting!"
That comment strikes me as overly partisan and anti-republican.
If you are going to mention efforts to clean up voting, mention the recent house vote.
Democrats voted *AGAINST* requirements for presenting your ID to vote in federal elections http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll456.xml
Stop it with the biased post making supabeast.
Just Google "Chicago" "Daley"
or "Philadelphia" "Rendell" "Stinson"
Plenty of stories of minority multiple voting registered at non existant addresses in Philly. Dead people voting democratic in Chicago.
Where have you been all these year you idiot spun?? with your head in the sand?
it's never stopped them in Chicago. The dead vote often in Chicago. Has been that way for decades.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You know, I'm as cynical as the next guy, but there are people in the USA who hold elected office and actually believe in the principles of democracy.
This is not about Democrats or Republicans. It's about the security and future of the country.
I think the poster confused "interesting" with "boring".
This sentence
"Erlich is a Republican -- the party often maligned for exploiting flaws in electronic systems"
Essentially, republicans blamed for twisting the vote
Show evidence of Republicans or Democrats exploiting flaws in electronic voting - there might be some, but it is too easy to merely commit voter fraud via non IT means because you can pretend to be someone that died 5 years ago and people cannot ask you for your ID.
Nice way to win converts, AC. Call someone with a legitimate and politely phrased question an idiot. Good work. Now because you hurt my feelings, I'm going to vote Democrat. Twice.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why can't they make an electronic voting machine that prints out a paper ballot? That way, people can look at the completed ballot and confirm its correctness on the electronic machine. You then turn in your completed paper ballot, which doesn't need to be scanned because it's already accounted for electronically.
that this guy may very well be the only sane person in the US government.
up here in Canada, we're still using paper ballots in every federal election. no need for any error-prone card-punching machine. just take your pen and drawn an X in the circle of you guy you want to vote for. simple!
anyone who advocates computerized voting needs a reality check in the form of a brick upside the head.
why no one can clue in on this down there...
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Why not simply use paper ballots as a backup system so recounts can occur?
Why not have a user go into a booth, make their election choices, and have a printout they submit? That way you have the best of both worlds - automated counting and a paper backup.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Republicans.
Democrats.
"There are different names for the same thing."
I wish when they were working at the federal level to reform voting procedures that they had simply standardized paper ballots are released and leave it at that. For instance, they could have required ballots not to use the butterfly system, provide rules for listing candidates in random order, etc. They could even require the ballot to be scanned on the spot with the results displayed to the voter so that they could correct their ballot if they made a mistake (ie, the pimpled ballot, not filling in a circle completely, etc.). This wouldn't be used to tally the vote, just to confirm to the voter that they are submitting a good ballot.
Actually i think in 2000, we (Maryland) had problems with Democrats picking up retarded people and bussing them around to multiple polling sites. I only remember hearing snippets in the news about it though at the time
What's more, I just did google those names, and Mayor Daley died in 1976. That's a long time ago. I'm looking for more recent information. I can't find anything about voting irregularites googling about "Philadelphia" "Rendell" "Stinson". Maybe you could help me? If it's that easy to find, just point me to some newspaper articles or something.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I've been thinking about the electronic voting machine problem for a while now (and posted about it twice before -- thanks for the feedback). Now, unless I've missed something, I believe there is a simple electronic scheme that protects anonymity (avoids coercion) and makes it impossible to rig the election through bad software.
To do this, the voting machines would be required to print each voter an official receipt tagged with a random number indicating their vote. At the end of the election, all the votes (a large table consisting of random number and vote tuples) could be posted so anyone who wanted could verify the tally and their vote. Vote injection would be avoided by permitting anyone (e.g., a representative from each party) to come out and count the turnout at each station on voting night.
The coercion problem introduced by the receipts is that a third party insists a voter shows them their receipt to verify they voted as instructed. This can be avoided by providing an option for voters to print as many additional fake receipts as desired, as well as providing them with the ability to secretly dispose of any of their receipts.
Valid fake receipts would actually be duplicate receipts for existing votes. This would make them indistinguishable from an actual vote, as they are an actual vote, just not that voters vote. This is easily accomplished by having the user indicate which additional votes they require receipts for, querying the database of existing votes for a random match, and then printing duplicate receipts.
The secret disposal of receipts could be accomplished by simply including a receipt disposal box in each booth. To avoid any attempts to alter votes who's receipts have been disposed of (this attack is already complicated by the fact that each vote could have had several receipts printed for it) the disposal boxes would have to be publicly disposed of in a secure manner immediately after the booths close (e.g., burnt in front of anyone who wishes to watch).
Finally, requiring the machines to display and print (on the receipt) the voters random number before they enter their vote avoids the possibility of bad software actually printing a duplicate receipt for the voter's actual vote and secretively casting an alternative ballot for the actual vote. The randome number generation, although not strictly necessary, can be further strengthened by requiring it to be a combination of machine and voter.
The machine would first displays and print its random number, and then the voter would enter another (non-trivial) number to multiply it by. This way, neither the machine nor the user (unless the former can do long division of very large numbers in their head) would be able to determine the final random number. Both numbers would be printed on the receipt so the machine could not cheat on the multiplication. This does not interfear with the coercing avoidance scheme as duplicate receipts for any existing vote and user's random number can be produced via long division.
I would love to hear some feedback, particularly any realistic attack vectors I've failed to account for. Thanks!
Ballots from 1988 and earlier (I believe; my memory is fuzze) were conducted with a purely mechanical system: you'd pull a big lever to draw the curtain, decide, pull down levers (which would bring down red plastic arrows indicating who you were voting for), and the act of pulling the lever to open the curtain would count the levers you'd pulled down. Being mechanical, they could be a little persnickety.
The 1996 and 2000 balloting where I was in Maryland was conducted using a standardized ballot, a black marker, and an optical scanner which fed the scanned ballot into a lockbox. It had the efficiency of an electronic system, but the ballot itself was clearly a paper record secured as it was counted. It seemed like a very good system. (Anyone else experience it?)
The 2004 ballot was conducted with Diebold machines. If they provided the Republicans any significant advantage, it wasn't in the presidency; the state went about 70-some% blue. I bring this up because, as I recall in 2004, balloting really wasn't so complicated or fraught with technical glitches.
Everyone else is gaping in astonishment at a Republican governor (amazingly a relief since Willy Don Schaefer, Governor of the State of Baltimore, was abrasive like tweed boxers) sounding off against Diebold-style electronic voting. I'm scratching my head and wondering what made voting so complicated this time.
Was the process quietly sabotaged by someone who wanted to see the state switch from electronic voting? If so, then I am now horribly conflicted.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
BOTH Dems and Republicans have the ability to exploit electronic voting systems. I have the ability to do it too. Blindly assuming the Republican's have with out irrefutable proof is wrong. Even though media which IS biased to either side depending on the source (Reps to Foxnews and Dems to CNN)may have made there own supposition, I am pretty sure noone has really been fingered for this yet because if they did, we'd be using paper or some other means already.
Gorkman
ballots... they only oppose electronic ballots when they LOSE. Which, during the period of increased implementation, has been more and more often.
... because he lost his mini-bar key.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
IMHO, Ehrlich (how it's actually spelled) is only trying to setup a platform for challenging the results if the election ends up being close. It is pretty much impossible to replace the entire voting system with paper ballots in time before the election, and since Ehrlich knows this, the only reason he'd state such a position is to seed FUD prior to the election date. If a recount or court challenge is needed by the GOP in Maryland, the public might be more receptive to his position (which will likely be "voter fraud") if they've been "educated" that the electronic system in Maryland is broken.
The USA should outsource their elections to India :).
Amen, Brother. They have turned politics into a sports show, pitting your favorite team against your favorite team's enemy. If you love the Browns, you hate the Steelers. That's just the way it is. You root for the Browns, or whoever is playing the Steelers. Life is great as long as the Browns win and the Steelers lose.
As long as politics are like that, life is simple. You don't have to look at the voting record, public statements, or platform of a candidate. You just have to know their color, red or blue or some color not red or blue. You don't have to weigh the actions of a politician, you just have to say we have to support him because he's our President (or governor, or police chief, or what-have-you).
Life is simple then. People like simple. It's all red or blue, no shades of purple.
A friend of mine (hi, Thor) is a republican. Except for that, he and I are very much the same. He's a good guy. He supports democracy, and constitutional freedom, and peace. He and I have the same ideals, we just have different thoughts on how best to achieve (or maintain) those ideals.
The blood in our veins is blue. The blood in our arteries is red. It's never as simple as one vs. the other, and I wish those in charge would stop exploiting the sports-mentality to distract us from domestic and international troubles.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
All thats needed to be solved here is to count votes fast and accurately without errors.
The creators seems to be more worried about what technology to use (wi-fi, encryption, yada, yada) than how to solve the problem.
Look at how India has already successfully used electronic voting machines across many elections - http://www.eci.gov.in/EVM/slide.asp
Before you bang on the table demanding cool animation while voting and the face of the person youre voting for - thats not the core purpose of the machine.
Adding more stuff in there makes it complex and breakable, especially people really want to break it.
If you're like me and want to see a return to paper ballots, or at least a move to a system that leaves a paper trail, then contact Governor Ehrlich and tell him "Thank you!" for trying to get rid of these machines!
Either send his office an email or give him a call. Non-MD residents can call his office at 800-811-8336, local residents can call 410-974-3591.
I'm not from Maryland, nor do I live there, but I just called and wrote Mr. Ehrlich's office to show my support for eliminating these machines from use. An insecure system that leaves no paper trail borders on insanity; it's nice to see someone stand up against them.
The busses are there to get people to a single polling place, since they might not have cars, and might not need cars. Some are handicapped and have never owned a car.
That's also why we don't want to have ID requirements. A great many people don't have state issued id's, since they don't drive.
Let's turn this around: Republicans, being a minority, want to see as many restrictions and hoops as possible on voting, because it helps them. That explains their support for measures that are biased against people who vote for Democrats typically. Even if some Republicans are excluded from voting because they don't have an ID, even more Democrats will be excluded for the same reason.
If you hold the moral value that the community is important, you should not rest until every American can vote as easily as you can vote. If any American is being dumped on, then we are ALL being dumped on. We must hang together, or we will all surely hang separately.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
It's likely that the news you heard was merely repeating lies. Voter registration is checked at each polling place, and it's unlikely that a bunch of retarded people are registered to vote in multiple precincts. If it's true, it shouldn't be difficult to track it down and prosecute the people registered in multiple places.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
from TFS:
>What makes this particularly interesting
>is that Erlich is a Republican -- the
>party often maligned for exploiting
>flaws in electronic systems -- and his
>attempts to clean up Maryland's voting
>problems are being opposed by Democrats,
>the party that is usually complaining
>about electronic voting!"
I suppose that you have forgotten that those claims of manipulating electronic votes were not valid, and typical hyper-partisan drivel. Maybe it has been repeated as a mantra often enough to make it seem real to some, but that has no bearing on its accuracy or prove that it's based on something valid.
This sort of idiotic conspiracy theory crap doesn't pass the basic tenets of common decency, much less public discourse.
MOST people holding public office are genuinely trying to do the right thing. And, most believe that their own personal positions are the right positions and therefore would prefer honest votes. It doesn't matter which party they happen to belong to.
Brett
It's entirely possible, if unlikely, that this guy is taking an independent stand on this particular issue.
In any case, the danger from electronic voting machines that lack a paper trail isn't hacking from the outside, though that's been the primary focus lately.
No, the real problem, and the real danger, is that the companies that make these machines will do so in such a way that they will automatically favor whatever candidate(s) the manufacturing companies prefer, and thus it simply becomes a matter of influencing the manufacturing companies to "prefer" a particular candidate, party, etc.
That's why Walden O'Dell's statement regarding delivering votes to the President was, and is, so troubling.
It's also why I believe the Republicans (to whom Diebold appears to have pledged their support, if O'Dell's statement has any weight at all) will win the upcoming election in most of the states that primarily use voting machines (except, of course, where it's obvious ahead of time that they shouldn't, and even then they might win a couple of those). It has nothing to do with being Republican so much as being the party that's in control right now and doing whatever it takes to stay there. You're a fool if you believe the Republican party isn't willing to do whatever it takes to stay in control.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
That's a poor comparison.
The democracies of India and the United States are very different beasts. Ours (USA) is significantly more complicated.
India has proportional representation and their ballots are very simple.
In the USA, we vote on everything, have more complicated ballots (in comparison), have multiple elections per year, and winner-takes-all elections.
Here's my comment from yesterday sporting greater detail.
For those who don't know, Daley is the name of the current and former major of Chicago. Out of 168 years of Mayoral oversight, the combined years for Daley's in office is 36 years (21.4%), a huge percentage. As such, the two words have significant overlap.
At least say to Google "Chicago" "Daley" "Vote" or "Chicago" "Daley" "Fraud", or something more specific.
Have you even tried your recommended search? Nothing in the first 30 hits focus on voting fraud (I won't be bothered to look further).
I mean really...
As a Marylander, I have to say "YAY for Erlich!"
Of course, Maryland carried the Democrats in the last two presidential elections, so Diebold must not be focusing thier effors here.
Technoli
"If you hold the moral value that the community is important, you should not rest until every American can vote as easily as you can vote. If any American is being dumped on, then we are ALL being dumped on. We must hang together, or we will all surely hang separately."
Well said!
Now the only problem is to get "teh masses" to see this...Im at a loss there, but you're spot on.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
This is the annoying thing about US politics, it seems many want every issue to be Red or Blue clean and simple.
It's not that simple and it's pretty unreasonable to make such baseless claims against the party as a whole.
I think the interesting thing is how many of the very powerful and respected politicians are making significant breaks with their party. In the US this infighting seems to be much more common when they're arguing with the president.
I think it is important to note that many if not most from both parties who really want to have fair elections, even if they're not quite sure how to achieve that.
Actually, the current Mayor of Chicago is named Daley. You found his father who gave JFK Chicago in 1960 which some say is why JFK flew to Nixon rather than vice versa.
There was a question as to whether votes for Kerry were on machines before the polls opened in 2004. If you've been in this city you know that Unions only protect one ticket and either scare or beat up the other.
Philadelphia has a lot of things - a two party system isn't one of them.
What's most amusing about Democrat charges is that they try to blame Governor's or the Federal system whereas vote control occurs at the local level.
(And I won't even get into the NJSC replacing Torch with Lautenberg.)
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
bitched, whined, and moaned about a "stolen" election down in Florida in 2000 (and the voters in Palm Beach hadn't been completely incompetant) there wouldn't have been the giant nationwide push for "electronic voting" in the first place, and I'd still be punching ballotcards nicely.
Thank you, sore losers.
The sanest thing would be to let technology progress and become adopted NATURALLY, instead of pushing things ahead faster than they should simply because you've suddenly lost faith in a system that's worked for decades. I don't need an ATM-like machine to handle my voting and I'm perfectly happy to wait hours for paper ballots to be manually shoved around. But then, I'm a Conservative.
Thank you, Democrats, for causing wasted millions of dollars, the introduction of dumb-ass technology, and general country-wide strife to fix a non-existant problem because you couldn't wrap your heads around the fact that Al Gore lost.
What's next? Do we get to spend the next 10 years futzing with the Electoral Collage only to decide that the Great Compromise was a good idea after all?
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Well, not so much about ballots but I am comfortable knowing that my vots (as a vermonter) is worth more then a vote in Maryland.
w00t.
now on topic, It is law that any votes that can be PROVEN to have been tampered with are disregarded.
No need to hack the machine, all you have to do is go in, open the lock and then tell the person at the desk the machine was broken when you went to vote. EVERY one of the votes on that machine is then thrown out, you just need to do it in the right places.
Oh, I hope they don't go to those butterfly ballots. You see those things, and and it's just so confusing. You open the thing up and you have that pin in your hand. You try and select the one you want but there's like names on both sides. It's like, "Hey, where do I punch?" It's just so complicated.
That's also why we don't want to have ID requirements. A great many people don't have state issued id's, since they don't drive.
That is an easily solvable problem: provide free state ID to those without one.
Let's turn this around: Republicans, being a minority, want to see as many restrictions and hoops as possible on voting, because it helps them. That explains their support for measures that are biased against people who vote for Democrats typically.
Um, what country do you live in? In the U.S., the Republicans have been the majority for over a decade, and have favored certain measures you (falsely) state are biased against people who vote for Democrats typically. If this is "explained" by them being a minority, then how do you "explain" their support for those measures while in the majority?
None of that makes any sense.
I arrived at 0655 at my polling place to find that the voting and registration machines were just being unpacked. I was the third person in line. They were having problems finding all of the parts to the registration machines(missing the memory cards).
At 0715 the first voting machine was ready but the registration machines still being assembled.
At 0725 they attempted to register the first person. They were able to get the voting card coded however the printer did not function.
They finally got a second registration machine working at 0745 and I was the first person able to vote. The first person registered still was not able to vote since they had not been able to print out his receipt. The second person along with many others had given up and left. I stopped counting at 20 and that was close to 0715.
People who gave up waiting asked repeatedly about casting a provisional ballet and were first told yes, then later told no. The no won. Many of those who gave up around 0730 said that they would not be able to vote at all. When I left they only had one of the three registration machines working.
Many voters went outside and called the election board to complain. The one person in charge of the machines ended up using a pay phone to call the election officials to try to figure out what was going on.
The bottom line is that the reasons behind the failures were lack of training, the person who opened the school was late, they were understaffed(grumblings about budget cuts) and to top it off, no cell phone coverage, nor a land line available with in reach of the registration machines(They had to use a pay phone out in the hallway).
Paper ballots will not fix all of the problems
http://www.wamu.org/programs/kn/06/09/21.php#12024
Avi Rubin was a guest today on the Kojo Nnamdi show on WAMU (a local NPR station). Not only is Professor Rubin an outspoken critic of the Diebold systems, he has also participated in the last two elections as an election judge. You can listen to the radio show at the above link once it gets archived later this afternoon. Some good commentary on Ehrlich's statement and on the election in Maryland in general.
Over 200 Years of using paper in elections, and thousands of years in development... not perfect, but our democracy worked very well under it. No coups, only one civil war which reunited the country again, relatively peaceful country without the "death squads" others have, only a few (any maybe ongoing) problems with presidents taking on more-than-democratic powers. But hey, it's an ok place, ain't it?
/.'rs. Give the country at least enough time where most voters were born with a family computer, not as something they remember being invented. I see that happening in about 30-40 years. It's a fundamental change in our democratic process, and all fundamental changes in democratic governments must change slowly over many generations. It's what keeps a democracy stable. Any sudden moves throw chaos into the system. Chaos means people lose trust in the system. Losing trust means the system starts to deteriorate, even break down. When democracy breaks down, it takes a LOT longer to restore it again. Just look at Thailand.
So a couple hanging chads made us think the sky was falling. But even after all that, I'm more comfortable with hanging chads than hacked boxes.
We've had what, 20 years of the computer really being main stream (give or take a few years), and less than that in which the majority of the population uses them?
Let's jump off the digital boat because we jumped on too soon. Paper is a proven product and proven in voting. Digital voting machines are unproven (well, proven bad), too secret (nothing secret about how paper works), and not enough people REALLY understand computers. If they did, we'd probably have to call in the national guard to keep the angry mobs away from Diebold offices.
Hey, I'm all for digital. But we're just not ready; we as in a nation, not as in
It was good for the environment, and its good for democracy.
Paper or Plastic?
Paper.
I8-D
As you mentioned you and your friend are very similar and yet members of two opposing political parties. It is my pleasure to inform you that the parties for all intents and purposes are the same. What shall we do then, you ask.
Vote for the candidate that you really would like to win. You are wasting your vote anyway on one of two candidates who are essentially the same worthless corporate pocket politician for life professional, why not use it. Maybe your qualified 3rd party candidate wont get elected this election or the next or the next or the next but sooner or later when the percentage voting for the republicrats starts dropping the 3rd party will win. The good news is that it will start slow and build exponentially. Tell your friends.
It seems the Govenor is doing some political posturing on this issue, knowing full-well it isn't possible to switch everything over in such a short ammount of time. So the Govenor is acting like a little kid, making a fuss, and the Democrats in question are being the adults, realizing 1 month isn't enough time to switch the whole election system over.
From the end of TFA: "The board feels it would be catastrophic to try to do that for another system between now and the general election,"
If he was just asking for them to be replaced AFTER the next election, that would be entirely different.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I think this is great. Long-term electronic voting that is open and can be inspected by anyone seems to make sense, but we're not there yet. Besides, I'm less concerned with how the vote is taken than who is voting these days. Frankly I believe there is enough safeguards available in the process to generally get the count right. What concerns me is when the dead and non-citizens start to vote.
Just yesterday in the house one party (if you don't know which one, RTA) unanimously voted against requiring voter ID. WTF? For you non-Americans, do you think it is okay for me to stop in to your voting booth while I'm vacationing in your country? Because apparently you can stop in to many of our polls and vote without being asked for any ID or proof of citizenship.
Oh, the recommendation for voter ID came from a bipartisan study headed by former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a Republican. Neither of these guys is a friend to the other party.
> What makes this particularly interesting is that Erlich is a Republican
Chances are there are more factions in the Republican party than one.
Just as all Democrats aren't 9/11-conspiracy-liberal-terrorist-loving-wackos not all Republicans are Katrina-bungling-WMD-lying-oil-industry-lapdogs.
Erlich probably wants to seperate himself from the current administration. Or maybe he just wants to do the right thing (although, in politics, that's a stretch)
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Won't work, since it's too complicated. What's wrong with simple paper ballots? They're used in my country (>80million people), and the voting process is a non-issue. It just works.
Fleur de Sel
Yeah, it's gimmicky and "clever". Voting is not supposed to be "clever", it's supposed to be quite direct.
Simply record the damn vote on durable print media that's verified by the voter. Or use an optical scanner where the print medium is the input. This creates two things you'd have to tamper with, which is MUCH harder than tampering with one thing. Either way you have a commission review the machines the way we review slot machines and avionics. It doesn't have to be a federal law -- get enough states with certifucation programs, and all the voting machines will be made to their spec.
Incidentally, on an unrelated point, one reason we want our elections over in one day is that it shrinks the window of opportunity for fraud and media manipulation.
How is voter registration checked without ID?
You hear a common theme here.. They are the same.. So when are we going to stop wasing out votes on them?
(D's and R's.. lets start voting for L's.)
That is an easily solvable problem: provide free state ID to those without one.
May I see your papers comrade? The point is if you don't *want* to have photo ID you don't need too. If you mandate something, that doesn't mean everyone will get it. The *vast* majority of people without ID will be of lower economic status, and also much more likely to vote Democratic.
I believe what he's saying is that the GOP needs to restrict as many possible Democratic voters from being able to vote to maintain their current electoral majority.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
So let me understand this.. you cite multiple instances of failure of the electronic voting system, then draw the conclusion that because of this, paper ballots will not fix every problem and by implication, that they are not suitable.
As a fellow Baltimoron and computer professional, let me say this. With paper ballots, there are no electronic registration machines to break, no printers to fail, no cards to code (or wait for), no memory cards to lose (or be tamprered with)... I'm a computer guy, and I can tell you from experience that you can't trust that the machines will always work or that they haven't been tampered with. Paper ballot systems do involve machines usually (not that I trust the counters), but at least you have a physical token that you can count by hand if neccessary.
I would put it to you that with paper ballots, you don't NEED to fix the problems caused by machines (duh) and that through it's simplicity, it generates less problems and is entirely recoverable (you can count them by hand if need be, and they don't "crash")
Thank you for posting your experience, it's important to tell folks what's really going on, but I would challenge you on your conclusion there that using paper isn't a reasonable response... it's a method that's been in use for *thousands* of years after all...
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I thought Bi-partisan is willing to service both Republican and Democratic Senators and Congressmen?
paintball
You can only count on people to act in their own self-interest.
Best of all, no training required.
Yes, let's scrap all these stupid voting systems. What's wrong with filling out your ballot in a booth, sealing it in an envelope, and then walking up to a box with a slot in the top and dropping it in? It worked fine for Iraq's elections. I'm sure this is how it was done here for 200 years too. What sort of advantage do we get by spending millions on buggy technologically advanced voting systems that everyone seems to question so much?
Actually, no, it doesn't. There's nothing "false" necessarily or even usually implicated by the use of the word "malign." Not sure where you get that from, but it wasn't a dictionary.
Actually, yes, it does. It necessarily implies false. That's from dictionary.com, which is based on the Random House dictionary. Merriam Webster says this: "MALIGN suggests specific and often subtle misrepresentation but may not always imply deliberate lying." Cambridge says "to say false and unpleasant things about someone or to unfairly criticize them" Not sure where you got the idea that it doesn't imply false, but in any case, you need to take a refresher course in vocabulary before you go spreading more misinformation about what words mean or don't mean.
Based on that, the rest of your points are moot. Now I understand why you said what you said. You simply didn't know the definition of malign. As you have shown yourself to be less than informed about the meanings of basic words and unable to present a rational defense of your own stated position, I see no reason to continue this conversation.
Good day, sir.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
May I see your papers comrade? The point is if you don't *want* to have photo ID you don't need too.
That's a separate issue. I was addressing the logistics.
The *vast* majority of people without ID will be of lower economic status, and also much more likely to vote Democratic.
No, you're conflating the two separate issues. Most people, regardless of economic status, will have no problem with getting an ID, if it is free. The people most likely to not want to get an ID are libertarians (who in my experience tend to be more likely to vote Republican, at least in the states I've lived in) and criminals of various shape and size (who may be more likely to vote Democrat, I dunno, but chances are, shouldn't be voting anyway, since they are, well, criminals).
I believe what he's saying is that the GOP needs to restrict as many possible Democratic voters from being able to vote to maintain their current electoral majority.
And that's nonsense, because the GOP has not changed its views on election reform much over the last decade, and they certainly had no need to "restrict" voters 10 years ago.
Of course, the premise is flawed anyway: the GOP is not trying to restrict any voters. They are only trying to make sure that whoever casts a vote, does so legally. What's far more true is that some Democrats are trying to make it easier for people to vote illegally.
Crude but the sentiment is there. Having parties in any political system only seems to lead to fighting between them while accomplishing 0 for the people that elected them. It seems they refuse to agree on anything. This is a prime example. I say anyone that actually claims one party or another gets band from any and all public elected offices for life. That would give us a fresh start and maybe things could actually get finished instead of both sides just making faces at each other. I myself belong to the only party that should be allowed to exist. I was born into it and as long as things don't go real wrong I will die a member of it, it's called being an American citizen. It is the only thing that should matter, remember this is not your country or my country it is our country.
WTF?
The sad thing is that what really matters is gas prices right now. The sheeple go to the pump and get mad that gas is high and they will say the President/Congress/government under the current party is doing poorly. Gas prices go down a bit, approval ratings rise in accordance.
There is no 'logic' in these elections, it is akin to one big high school popularity contest and how people place the blame for their problems. ("I had to pay $100 to fill my Canyonero, I hate Bush!")
Except if they're Republican busses, then democrats slash all the tires so they cannot bus anyone.
That's also why we don't want to have ID requirements. A great many people don't have state issued id's, since they don't drive.
That's interesting. I don't think I've ever met anybody who did not have some kind of government issued ID. I've met a lot of people, too. I think most rational people understand that if you don't have any form of ID at all, you're either a.) probably not keeping very close tabs on the political issues at hand, or b.) lying for the purposes of committing vote fraud.
Let's turn this around: Republicans, being a minority, want to see as many restrictions and hoops as possible on voting, because it helps them. That explains their support for measures that are biased against people who vote for Democrats typically. Even if some Republicans are excluded from voting because they don't have an ID, even more Democrats will be excluded for the same reason.
And you Democrats want to go scrape up all of the illiterate, deranged, homeless bridge-dwellers you can find in order to get democratic votes. Nevermind that an illiterate, deranged homeless person has no hope of issuing a knowledgable vote, or having any situational awareness regarding the issues at hand.
If you hold the moral value that the community is important, you should not rest until every American can vote as easily as you can vote.
I've voted in three states, in rural, suburban, and inner city precincts, and not one time have I ever been prevented from voting, had difficulty voting, or found the process to be overly complex. My advice to those who think themselves disenfranchised w/ regard to voting is to think, plan, and execute. Simple as that.
I urge everyone to request absentee ballots early. I don't want my vote disappearing in a Diebold machine.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Paper ballots are an absolute MUST. Without them the ONLY record of a vote is on a chunk of flash memory or a hard drive. It's just bits. But a paper ballot (notice I'm saying ballot not reciept) is only the first step. Many states and counties conduct no auditing at all!!! Some have laws that put significant barriers in the way of auditing! In order to trust an election regardless of the device used to vote you have to conduct an audit of a statistically significant group of precincts. If ANY irregularity is found you have to expand the audit. Audits must be conducted in the open and precinct level data including breakouts for vote type (regular, absentee, provisional) must be made available to the public.
Slashdotters are supposed to be technically competent... How many of you know that the Diebold machines have a code interpreter using the propriitory accu-basic language that automatcially looks for and runs code on any inserted memory card. These cards are where vote data is stored and transported. Accubasic documentation is not terribly hard to find and card writers are commercially available. So when voting is done the cards are transported to a central tabulator. The cards are inserted. ANY accubasic code is executed. The votes are uploaded and tabulated. If this doesn't scare you what would? In my opinion these machines are not vulnerable to exploitation, they are DESIGNED to be exploited. Diebold audit logs are not sequentially numbered so altering the audit log is no more difficult than deleting unwanted entries.
don't believe me? google the Hursti report or look for it on the blackboxvoting.org website.
-- QED
...I suspect one side to be a lot more rotten than the other.
Does anyone remember the reason for electronic voting? It was originally pushed by Democrats. It was to get a consistent back-end to the voting process. And the reason that was good was so that a deaf person, blind person, person invapable of pulling the lever (I liked the levers), person incapable of holding a pen (yes, arthritic old people are common), and such will be able to have some modular front-end attached to the standardized back end for easy handicapped voting.
I think the Republicans are great at destroying that which they do not like. If you don't like public schools, "help" them with NCLB and watch them crash. If you don't like all the wasteful exceptions for handicapped voting, embrace, pervert, then abolish the only agreed upon fix. It's too bad that Bush got distracted by the spurious war to get his Social Security plan through. He claimed that by reducing payment into the system (without decreasing payouts), he could make it last longer.
This is not an attack of Republicans, nor a defense of Democrats. This is an explanation of the effectiveness of the Republicans in ending things they don't like by embracing, corrupting, then ending them. Perhaps it is the time when the Republicans everywhere will get together and ban the horrible implimentations of electronic voting brought to us by a Republican CEO that promised to deliver Ohio's votes to the Republican party.
Learn to love Alaska
While, the Democrats complain about vote fraud, they are the ones that demanded electronic voting after the Florida recount.
The Democrats are also resisting the requirement that every voter show ID when they vote.
Of the high profile vote recounts in the last 6 years, all have occured in jurisdictiond dominated by democrat politicians and election boards run by democrats.
Chicago has a well earned reputation of vote fraud. (yes the dead still vote in elections and they vote democratic)
The democrats pushed motor voter, a program that has allowed non citizens to register when they get drivers licenses.
Simply put, the democrats are not interested in fair elections, they want a system where vote fraud is easier.
Ask yourself, why are the democrats resisting changes that would reduce vote fraud?
Just to make it clear... the democrats aren't the only ones accused of stuff like this... Republicans do stuff too.
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
But a paper ballot (notice I'm saying ballot not reciept)
The difference? If you go into a booth, make your selections, and physically see them on a printout that you stuff into a ballot box, isn't a receipt synonymous with a ballot?
Seriously I don't see the difference...
I do think it's foolish right now to not let people get a proper ballot to submit as well... It's anti-democratic, and you guys should make a SCOTUS case out of it...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The Republican governor is just covering his ass. Republican Wynn, who's ahead in this typically "messed up" Maryland election, is virtually bragging that he cheated, on the floor of the House of Representatives.
--
make install -not war
"Ehrlich" is German for "Honest". Nomen est omen.
Dear "Profane MuthaFucka",
Nice of you to start with your ad hominem attack on the poster's source.
It's likely that the news you heard was merely repeating lies.
Swiftly followed by your strawman argument.
Voter registration is checked at each polling place, and it's unlikely that a bunch of retarded people are registered to vote in multiple precincts.
Yeah, but if an unscrupulous group have registered the 'graveyard vote' in those precincts and give the 'retarded' people a cookie to say "Yes, I'm me!" and hand over this piece of paper in response to request for voter registration. Then, being card carrying registered democratic handicapped voters, these 'retarded' people have to have their "government paid life skills aid", who is also driving the bus, go in the vote booth to "read" them the ballot and "help" them vote.
If someone is going to collude to commit fraud, you don't give them credit to be smart enough to have filed the registration cards? Yes, you have to be registered but you don't have to have a picture id. You can register a dead dog living in a vacant lot as a voter.
If it's true, it shouldn't be difficult to track it down and prosecute the people registered in multiple places.
Prosecute who? The dead people for whom someone mailed in a voter resignation card? The addresses are most likely to a "residential Hotel" that rents rooms by the hour or a homeless shelter where one of the conspirators works. They could take the job as 'night manager' for a few weeks register the graveyard voters collect the cards in return mail and quit the job up to a year or more before the election.
BTW - HAVING HAD TROUBLE IN THE PAST BEING UNDER STOOD BY AMERICAN READERS, most of whom have English as a second language, LOOK UP "appositive" IN THE DICTIONARY
This doesn't surprise me. The politics have be a joke for years. While I would not say that this is typical of the Democratic party, the Dems have been incredibly overt in election fraud and other types of fraud in Maryland. You see Maryland has been, until recently, a one party state and without any real checks or balances, things have gotten out of hand. Erlich's election was the first sign of a real shift in the state politics (as no one believed that he actually had a chance). I have seen mayors use the "race card" as a "get out of jail free card." I have seen Governors elected on votes of dead people and pets. This wouldn't surprise any Marylander at all. I am glad that I was able to move away.
The problem with paper ballots is that checking for fraud is a mass effort, and even then there is no guarantee that ballots have not been added or removed. It requires trust in those running the election. The aforementioned scheme does not have this problem as any individual can verify the results themselves.
Further, the system also does not seem overly complex to me. Joe Average comes in. The system says your vote number is XYZ. He touches his vote choices on the screen. It prints him a receipt. It then offers to print him out any number of additional bogus receipts (which, of course, he will not require as everyone knows receipts can claim anything). He leaves.
Only a very small percentage of the population had to go home and check the totals and their votes keeps the system honest. If anything funny is happening to very many votes at all, the probability of it effecting the vote of someone who checks becomes very large. As they have the receipt to prove tampering occurred, their complaining will trigger a snowball of checking.
(Personally, paper ballots are also fine by me, as long as everybody who wants to is allowed to observe the proceedings. My interest in electronic voting is only in ways it can offer more security than paper ballots and the sort of inevitable its coming feeling.)
You folks need to come to Texas to see how to really run an election. First off, you buy all the votes you can. Then you do a bunch of registration drives, where all kinds of people, including dead ones, get registered. Then you have your lackeys at the polling places. If they see too many ballots coming in that are not voting "the straight party ticket", those boxes get removed, carried away, and the ballots are sorted. Anyone who voted in a way you don't like gets their ballot replaced. Your lackeys also turn a blind eye when it's time for your folks to come through the second, third, or tenth time. Then after the election, you have your counters who convienently skip the other side's candidates votes. Google on Duval County and you'll get the idea. The real clincher folks - it's all Democrats.
Given my experience with the Democrat machine here in Texas, I'd say that they want to stay electronic because it's easier to manipulate. Look at the issues with the Diebold E-voting machines - 1 minute hacks, hardwired admin passwords, etc.
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
True it is easy to be accused of technology abuse, but lets address the root cause of the issue and not blame technology. It is a little hard to blame the machine that it was never delivered to polling place (The cause of other polling places opening very late)
>how best to distract citizens from the real issues facing our country and the world.
You almost got a Best of Slashdot nomination for that. Why is gay marriage being waved in people's faces like a red flag in front of a bull? Because the matador wants to deflect attention away from the sword he's about to stick in their guts.
Pick your own example if you don't like mine.
The difference is that an official ballot IS the vote. It's a legal document containing a person's vote. A reciept has no particular legal standing. If an audit is conducted and the paper ballots disagree with the computer tabulation then the ballot clearly takes precidence. If all you have is a printed out receipt the answer is not clear at all.
-- QED
The point I was trying to make is that people make the difference. Papaer ballots will not solve the problem that the machines were not delivered to the polling place on time.
Only people can solve those types of problems.
Your party is corrupt. Your party is money-grubbing and is only concerned about their own power.
Only idiots vote for a party that is as non-logical as yours. Your party has been taken over by extremists who only want to destroy the United States as we know it!!
Your party is nothing but a bunch of Useful Idiots who support the New World Order!!
Your party doesn't even care about the people any more. Your party is only worried about getting more money from Special Interests.
Look at all of the voting fraud your party is involved in. Do you know why your party doesn't complain more loudly about vote fraud? It's because your party doesn't want the extend of their own involvement known to the general public! It would destroy your party!
Your party only fields idiots and crooks for office. They have to be idiots to support the things that your party believes in. You, know things like gay marriage, abortion, and the war? Idiots! I, however, will not associate with idiots, so I belong to my party.
Sure, my party has a few crooks in it, but I would never support it if it had as many crooks as your party does.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
Why do they have to be read on the spot? That was the whole point of my email address confirmation suggestion.
The one out of power has fewer opportunities to cheat and doesn't have the power to rig the whole process.
Crooked elections perpetuate the rule of whoever's in charge.
One key virtue of democracy is that it allows throwing out incompetent, dishonest, or damaging rulers (if anyone cares) without blood in the street. Crooked elections hurt because they block the vital function of throwing the bums out and putting another set of bums in.
The only reason vote fraud looks like a Republican issue is that Republicans are in power. We'll have the same fight forever, be it Greens, the Reform Party, or the Natural Law Party in charge.
Why bother with provisional ballots? Why not just have every properly identified registered voter vote on a paper ballot using a nice big black indelible felt tip marker?
You fill in the bubble for your choice and after you are done you drop it in the box.
You make a bunch of stray marks? You ask for a clean ballot.
You select wrong candidate? You ask for a clean ballot.
You vote for both candidates in the same election? You ask for a clean ballot.
You make a mistake? You ask for a clean ballot.
The ballots get collected and run through three different manufacturer's 'scantron' type optical readers each using a different detection method. Total is the number you get by two out of three of the different scanning methods.
Questionable votes? Add a collator to separate the ballots. Then inspect the ballot by hand and/or rescan.
Dispute an election outcome. Rescan for only that race, separate by candidate, inspect and hand count.
Problems on a ballot, like double votes, no votes, write-in-candidates already get resolved under state and local voting laws.
At the end there is always a human readable permanent record, the original ballot.
I think most rational people understand that if you don't have any form of ID at all, you're either a.) probably not keeping very close tabs on the political issues at hand, or b.) lying for the purposes of committing vote fraud.
Oh give me a break... that isn't rational at all.
I live in a two story house.
The master bedroom and bath are upstairs.
Downstairs is my office, a hot tub, a bath... and the laundry room.
I often shower downstairs and grab some clothes from the laundry room and head out... without my wallet.
The keys are on a hook by the entry... and all my vehicles are loaded w/ cash.
I see no reason to spend ten minutes trying to figure out where the heck I left my wallet this time.
It is as simple as that.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
So, we let how many thousands or tens of thousands of fraudulent votes be cast so you don't have to go home and retrieve your wallet? Fuck you very much, sir.
There's really no difference with the existing parties. --- http://threeparties.blogspot.com/
I just had another idea. A number matching system. You get a tear off at the poll with the number of your ballot on it. You go to a website and it tells you if the ballot was scanned and what the items entered were. Then it's not personal.
Let's see here. Operate car w/o your drivers license - illegal. Cars "loaded" with cash - idiotic. Not cariong enough to ensure you have your wallet with you on election day - airheaded. Not wanting to be bothered to go home to pick up wallet so as to legally vote - lazy as all hell. You're a fucktard, dude.
And I won't even get into the NJSC replacing Torch with Lautenberg.
I will. First off, the election law wasn't 100% clear for the situation that occurred. "The Court agrees with plaintiffs that the statute simply does not contain a legislative declaration that the filling of a vacancy within forty-eight days of the election is prohibited." The jurisprudence in New Jersey regarding election law, otoh, is very clear. "Election laws are to be liberally construed so as to effectuate their purpose. They should not be construed so as to deprive voters of their franchise or so as to render an election void for technical reasons."
The court determined that the voter was better served by allowing a replacement candidate than upholding a vague and arbitrary deadline for changes on the ballot due to withdrawl of a candidate. Why don't you read the decision for yourself.
Service in legislatures should be just like jury duty. Every adult over 21 in each district should be registered in a database indexed by SocSecNo, and every two and six years some random person in each district is selected and made to go serve as Representative or Senator. Once their term is up, they are removed from the database for 12 years and aren't subject to being picked again during that time. We'll get losers that way, but we'll also get some smart people, none of whom will be able to keep their seats long enough to get burned out. No more politicking, no more election ads, no more parties. Lobbying will still go on, but make it illegal for someone who has served to lobby for the term immediately after their term is over.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Voter registration is checked by comparing the name you give to the name on a list. The Democrats have stopped every effort to require any type of identification as proof that you have the name you say you have. A bunch of retarded people who will give the name you tell them are a great way to do this. Smart enough to follow directions and foolish enough to never know it was a bad thing or become a whistlblower.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
If requiring a picture ID is inherently discriminatory then why is it ok to as for it before selling tobacco or alcohol? Isn't this institutional discrimination? Does is purposely try to prevent minorities from purchasing legal products? Why has the NAACP ignored this relic of racism?
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
How is this off topic?
The Democrats have stopped every effort to require any type of identification as proof that you have the name you say you have.
Amen. In the 2004 election, I went to my precinct in San Diego. When they didn't ask the person in line in front of me for ID, I was appalled. So I just held out my ID instead of telling them my name.
The girl said "I don't need your ID, just your name."
I said "no, I want you to verify my identity before you give away my vote to someone who isn't me."
She said "I'm not allowed to look at ID."
I said "of course, because we wouldn't want the illegal mexicans without ID to have a problem voting."
When I called the San Diego voter affairs office to complain, they said this was just SOP. Our tax dollars at work...
That whole article is a web of lies. And I don't say that loosely. It is some of the most blatant lying I've seen in a mainstream "news" article in a long time.
A well... guess I picked a bad example... but I honestly can't believe that one party does crooked things and the other doesn't. Frankly, I distrust both sides... and that was my point. Nice debunking... I admit I got bored reading that insanely long article and was struggling to finish it, let alone fact check it.
*sigh* ... it would be nice if you could just depend on stuff printed at a fairly popular outlet to actually be fact checked. But I guess that would be too much to ask...
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
So, we let how many thousands or tens of thousands of fraudulent votes be cast so you don't have to go home and retrieve your wallet?
Actually, I didn't say that at all.
I said that the reasons for not having an id don't have to be fraudelent.
Fuck you very much, sir.
Right back at you...
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
Operate car w/o your drivers license - illegal.
Wrong. Not required to be on your person, just valid at the time of any "incident".
Cars "loaded" with cash - idiotic.
Why?
I'm not a chicken shit, and I can take care of myself. Hell, I'd actually *like* a little action seeing I live in the heart of red country and would not mind kicking a little red ass every now and then anyway... let's call it "anger management".
Besides, you never know who around here has a gun in their vehicle either... and I'm betting I can hold my own. If you know what I mean.
And since there is coffee on every corner and I drive a big assed truck that needs gas on every corner also... having money is a good thing.
Not wanting to be bothered to go home to pick up wallet so as to legally vote - lazy as all hell.
Don't need it. Registration in the truck has my name and address... that is all I need.
You're a fucktard, dude.
I've been called worse, by better.
No worries...
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
"What makes this particularly interesting is that Erlich is a Republican -- the party often maligned for exploiting flaws in electronic systems -- and his attempts to clean up Maryland's voting problems are being opposed by Democrats, the party that is usually complaining about electronic voting!"
You still think "Democrat" and "Republican" actually mean something.
Here, let me rephrase this: the governor from the minority party is attempting to return to paper ballots, while the party that has been in the majority since freakin' Reconstruction is opposed.
Really, the party particulars have nothing to do with anything. The governor is doing what he believes is in the best interest of getting more of his fellow party members into the General Assembly.
A well... guess I picked a bad example... but I honestly can't believe that one party does crooked things and the other doesn't. Frankly, I distrust both sides... and that was my point.
:-)
... it would be nice if you could just depend on stuff printed at a fairly popular outlet to actually be fact checked. But I guess that would be too much to ask...
... not for the poor response, but for the fact that the hurricane existed), and Rolling Stone too has a long history of complete BS articles against Bush and Republicans (like an article they had not long ago claiming historians were judging Bush to be the worst President ever, when no historian worth listening to would ever even attempt to make such a judgment until at least 10-20 years after he left office, let alone while he was still in office).
Right. And it was my point, as well.
Nice debunking... I admit I got bored reading that insanely long article and was struggling to finish it, let alone fact check it.
Yeah, I heard about the whole thing on Colbert one night and thought, "no, that can't be true," so I went ahead and actually looked for his references. Unfortunately for him, I found them.
*sigh*
Sometimes, it is. Frankly, I would be much more likely to trust this article if it were some other writer in some other periodical, though. RFK Jr. is a virulent Bush-hater who has a history of making things up (like blaming Bush for Katrina
There are some people and media outlets I just automatically dismiss out of hand, by default. RFK Jr., Rolling Stone, Media Matters are a few. Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann are up there too. People like Hannity and Rush and Franken and Medved are pretty high on the list too, though not as high.
There are some far more reliable partisan outlets and individuals. For example, The New Republic and National Review, on the left and right, and many of their writers are heavily biased, but usually (at least, say, 95 percent or so of the time) trustworthy in their matter-of-fact statements (where trustworthy means not just accurate in fact, but also devoid of false implication).
But there was no legal basis for Torricelli to withdraw. He was the candidate selected by the Democrats. There was no vacancy.
No franchise was going to be deprived. No election was liable to be voided.
Look at the situation with DeLay for further enlightenment.
You don't change the rules midway through if you don't like them. Unless you're the Florida or New Jersey Supreme Courts, that is.
Besides, it wasn't terribly fair to Forrester who had basically won the race, only to have to run a whole new race against a former Senator.
But hey, if it's cool to just change the law on the fly, whatever. But this blatant disregard for the law is one of many reasons I left the Garden State.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
I agree. It says something about the system when:
It's a shame that the party he's from is being made to somehow be an issue yet again. I'm sure it's one of the things he'd want to be noticed, but all that continuing to highlight this does is to reinforce the system as it is, which is one of the big reasons that US Federal politics is so messed up.
But there was no legal basis for Torricelli to withdraw.
And there was no legal basis for him not to withdraw. In light of this, the court ruled in favor of the voters: someone who wants to serve should be on the ballot rather than someone who no longer wants the position.
Here is an Amendment GUARANTEED to weed out lazy lawmakers, and is a better use of their time:
ALL Legislators and elected officials are REQUIRED to work 40-hour work weeks. Each work day begins at 8:00AM (0800 hours) and ends at 5:00PM (1700 hours) that same day. A work week will be defined as beginning at 12:01AM (0001 hours) Monday and ending at 11:59 (2359 hours) Friday of that same 5-weekday period. Weekdays are defined as being Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Employment attendance will be verified though the use of initialed, signed, and secure computer-printed timecards that are to be used prior to the start of each workday. Legislators and elected officials will be salaried, and forbidden from organizing and/or forming unions. Due to the responsibilities owed to the public regarding the functionality of government and National Security, vacation time with be limited to two weeks paid-vacation per calendar year. Healthcare is to be provided through State medical and health programs. Transportation, and all related financial responsibilities (with the exception of security) related thereto is the responsibility of the Legislator, with adequate security to be provided by the State and at no personal expense to the legislator. All increases or decreases in earnings must be approved by a public measure. Such measures are to be included on the ballot, during normal (non-special) elections. in the form of a measure, to be approved or rejected by eligible voters. All powers of the legislature to determine income of legislators are hereby revoked and transferred to the Citizens. Initial salaries will begin at U.S.$75,000. Salary increases can be no greater than U.S.$5,000 per 18-month period.
If they passed this, I wouldn't care as much about how insecure the voting methods are, just as long as they earn their keep. Whoever earns their wages through actual hard work gets my vote.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
By minority, I mean that more people identify as Democrats than as Republicans. Republicans have had some excellent get out the vote operations for decades now, and have won more elections. That doesn't mean that they are the majority of the population, just that they have cast the majority of the votes.
As far as the free state ID goes, I haven't decided if that's a good idea or not. I completely understand the privacy implications of it, and the history of states that have required identification is sometimes very chilling. On the other hand, our democracy depends on reliable elections and a mandatory ID may in the end the only way to provide reliable elections. So, at this point I don't know.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
By minority, I mean that more people identify as Democrats than as Republicans.
That's not a useful measurement, since self-identification (especially where one refuses to self-identify) does not accurately measure perspective, viewpoint, agreement, support, and so on. What matters is how those people vote, and in recent years, independents have favored Republicans.
As far as the free state ID goes, I haven't decided if that's a good idea or not.
Me neither. But I lean that way.
I don't know why you're quibbling about whether people are just saying that they are Democrats, or if they are actually Democrats. It's not relevant to my point.
We're not debating about the efficacy of the strategy of supressing voting rights; I'm describing and clarifying the reasoning behind supression of voting rights.
It's an excercise for the reader to determine if it's a good strategy or not.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I don't know why you're quibbling about whether people are just saying that they are Democrats, or if they are actually Democrats.
I don't know why you think I am.
It's not relevant to my point.
What is relevant is the fact that Republicans have not been a minority in this country, in any reasonable sense of the word "minority," for over a decade.
We're not debating about the efficacy of the strategy of supressing voting rights; I'm describing and clarifying the reasoning behind supression of voting rights.
Except that you are making up "facts" that don't exist to "prove" your point.
You know Pudge, you're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts.
Republicans are the minority, Democrats are the majoriy. Republicans cast most of the votes, Democrats don't vote in nearly the numbers that Republicans do.
That's the facts, and I don't know why you'd try to argue with a fact. If you're trying to deduce whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican by the way they answer an indirect question, bear in mind that how you ask the question matters. When you come right out and ask people if they are Democratic or Republican, more people say they are Democrats then anything else.
If you still insist on arguing that your opinion overrides the facts, I refer you to the US census data.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
You know Pudge, you're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts.
Back at ya.
Republicans are the minority, Democrats are the majoriy. (sic)
False. That's not been true, in any sense, in many years. By the same standard you claim the Republicans are a minority (less than half the actual country), so too are the Democrats, since a substantial number of Americans vote substantially across party lines. Neither party is, in the sense you claim, a "majority."
Of course, in the only actually meaningful sense -- you know, that is, who gets elected -- the Republicans are a majority. But the Democrats are not a majority in any sense.
Republicans cast most of the votes, Democrats don't vote in nearly the numbers that Republicans do.
I don't believe that's true, and there's no actual facts to prove it.
If you still insist on arguing that your opinion overrides the facts, I refer you to the US census data.
Oh yes, please, try to show me where U.S. Census data backs your claims. I'd love to see you try.
Folks, this is a perfect demonstration of how Republicans lie and try to dodge factual information. Notice that all he's done is say that he doesn't believe what I'm saying, state that it's his opinion that I'm wrong, and otherwise make assertions that I'm full of shit.
On the other hand, I'm referring to US Census data. I'm not going to hold his dick while he looks it up. He's a big boy, he can do it himself. I suspect that he's just annoyed that the facts have a well-known liberal bias.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Folks, this is a perfect demonstration of how Republicans lie and try to dodge factual information.
... you provided no factual information.
Um
Notice that all he's done is say that he doesn't believe what I'm saying, state that it's his opinion that I'm wrong
No, I state as a matter of fact you are wrong. It is utter rubbish for you to assert Democrats are a majority of the population. It's been decades since either party has had more than fifty percent of the population.
On the other hand, I'm referring to US Census data.
No, you're not.
I'm not going to hold his dick while he looks it up. He's a big boy, he can do it himself.
I can't look it up because it doesn't exist.
What's really going on here is now that I call your bluff, you attack me, because you know you can't find it.
I did provide factual information.
n .pdf#search=%22us%20census%20political%20%22party% 20identification%22%22
t ab2a_2.htm
1) There's more Democrats than Republicans. That's a fact.
2) The Census reports it. That's a fact.
3) Pollsters report it. That's a fact.
Since one of us has to be a man, and the other a child, I'll be the grownup here and point out that the Census data up till 1995 is graphed here: http://www.census.gov/prod/1/gen/95statab/electio
And some poll data indicating what I have been saying all along is here:
http://www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/toptable/
Now Pudge, go fuck yourself. If you want to claim victory based on some semantic laxity in my using the term majority then I think everybody will be able to see what a whiny fuck you are.
Your crying is completely irrelevant to my original point in that Republicans are fewer in number than Democrats, so Republicans resort to both a superior GOTV effort, AND an unAmerican dirty-tricks campaign designed to make it harder for people who are traditionally Democrats to vote.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
No, you didn't. You made assertions. "Adults" know the difference.
1) There's more Democrats than Republicans. That's a fact.
That was not your assertion. Your assertion was a. Republicans are not a majority and b. Democrats are a majority. It's not a simple matter of which has more, but which has more than 50 percent. It's common knowledge that slightly more Americans self-identify as Democrats, but more independents vote Republican.
2) The Census reports it. That's a fact.
No, it is not a fact. It does not exist, as I will show below. Further, what data does exist does not show Democrats are a majority.
3) Pollsters report it. That's a fact.
You never once mentioned pollsters until now. Why now say that you did? And incredibly, hilariously to me, you actually just link to two separate representations of essentially the same data. It's not "the Census and pollsters," it's a single source.
Since one of us has to be a man, and the other a child, I'll be the grownup here and point out that the Census data up till 1995 is graphed here
Except, of course, if you actually read the data, it does not show what you pretend it shows.
Look at the actual data the graph is based on. It shows that -- for example, in 1994 -- a mere 15 percent of Americans were strong Democrats, and 19 percent weak Democrats. I'll be the adult and do the math: that's 34 percent. As opposed to 31 percent for Republicans. Neither is a majority.
The other 13 percent for Dems and 12 percent for Republicans comes from "Independent Republicans/Democrats," which basically means "oh I tend to favor that party more than the other one, but I am independent." Those independents, in the words of the people who actually gathered and reported the data (which is NOT the Census!), are that they are "leaners." They "lean" toward one party, but do not really identify with that party. You include them as "people [who] identify as Democrats." But they aren't: they identify as independents who lean toward the Democrats.
The actual question they ask is:
And further, they explain:
So the person self-identifies as an independent, and THEN says they lean one way or the other. In no case are people who, in your words, "identify as Democrats" included in these numbers. Look at the dataset if you like. Search the file anes_cdf_var.txt for the code VCF0301 to see the question asked, and the explanation of the data.
Also, this *is not Census data.* I will assume you just made an error and are not lying here, because the link you provided does not note this fact. But this data the Census Bureau provides does not come from the Census itself. Read the footnote (which was not on the link you provided, but is on the one I provided above). "Source: Center for Political Studies, University of Michi
Now, a separate post: the last one was devoted with the actual debunking of your factual claim. And herein I debunk your other claims.
...
If you want to claim victory based on some semantic laxity in my using the term majority
It's not a mere semantic issue. You were attacking me for denying that Democrats have a majority. I took that word literally when you used it.
I know you think your point is beyond that, but your attacks on me for denying facts were based on my denial of your use of the word "majority," specifically, and in the notion that the Census had any data itself about party affiliation.
Your crying is completely irrelevant to my original point in that Republicans are fewer in number than Democrats, so Republicans resort to both a superior GOTV effort, AND an unAmerican dirty-tricks campaign designed to make it harder for people who are traditionally Democrats to vote.
My other problems with what you said flow from the fact that neither party is close to a majority: it only makes sense to say the GOP is trying to kill of the Democratic vote if the Democrats really do have a majority, or a very big plurality. They have neither. What's true is that independents make up a bigger group than either the Democrats or Republicans, and independents tend to vote more Republican. Those are facts. And I see no reason to believe these mythical so-called "dirty tricks campaigns" would be more likely to kill of the votes of "people who are traditionally Democrats" (which was a mere 34 percent in 1994) as independent voters, who are themselves more likely to vote Republican.
The GOTV effort is a huge deal, yes. But a. there's no evidence whatsoever that the GOP engages in more "dirty tricks" than the Democrats, and b. there's no evidence whatsoever that should a campaign exist, it would be likely to help the Republicans, who have something to gain in pulling in more independent voters (maybe not in 2006, but moreso than not over the last decade).
You were attacking me for denying that Democrats have a majority. I took that word literally when you used it.
A few posts up I wrote what I meant by majority. And yes, majority was the wrong word. Instead of trying to win by semantic tricks, you should have just pointed out the misuse. No big deal.
Meanwhile, you've proven to be a whiny bitch with your hair splitting. Republicans can parse any sentence to say what they want, even though I've laid out the facts in black and white.
Give it up, you lost, and your spinning doesn't change the numbers on the page.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
A few posts up I wrote what I meant by majority. And yes, majority was the wrong word. Instead of trying to win by semantic tricks, you should have just pointed out the misuse. No big deal.
No. You have it ass-backwards. I had no clue you were misusing it. It is your job to point that out.
Meanwhile, you've proven to be a whiny bitch with your hair splitting.
Dude. I directly refuted your main point, and your subordinate points. There is no evidence in the data to support your claim that the GOP is trying to keep the Democrat votes down. None. Whatsoever. As to 1994, the difference between GOP and Dem was 31 to 34 percent. That's nothing. There's no basis in that number for saying that Republicans are trying to keep the Democratic vote down since there are "more Democrats."
even though I've laid out the facts in black and white.
Except, of course, that you did not provide a single fact to back up a single claim you made.
Ah for fucks sake. If I'm mis-using it, that means that I didn't notice my error for whatever reason. I noticed it later, and also noticed that YOU were making a whiny little girly argument out of it. What a stupid little girl you are.
Except, of course, that you did not provide a single fact to back up a single claim you made.
You're a pig-headed little bitch, guzzling my hot sticky cum! You refuted nothing, but you DID lick my foreskin clean. THANKS! Seriously, you're a piece of work. A frightened little baby you are. Just suck my cock.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Ah for fucks sake. If I'm mis-using it, that means that I didn't notice my error for whatever reason. ... and? How am *I* supposed to know you don't mean what you say? And yet you still blame me for it. How does that make any sense?
You refuted nothing
You made two claims. One was that there are a majority of Democrats (which you later changed to plurality). That claim was at first false, and then when you look at the actual unreliable data, it's shown to be insignificant. This I proved, conclusively.
Your second claim was based on the first false claim: that because of the significant difference between the parties, this is evidence the GOP is playing dirty tricks. Except of course, the difference is NOT significant. So the conclusion did not follow from the actual evidence.
Then, realizing you are left with nothing, you simply lace your reply with obscenities.
*shrug*
Of course, history tells us that more democrats cross party lines to vote republican and most NPA voters tend to vote republican than democrat. Hint: I'm neither blue nor red -- and I've voted both ways in the past.
We have tons of unproven allegations of dirty tricks slung by the left to the right, but if memory serves, there's a fairly substantial number of proven (and prosecuted) cases of dirty tricks from the left AGAINST the right (GOP tires slashed by dems, filing false/fraudulent voter registration forms (chad stanton), voter fraud in St. Louis (Charles Powell).
Sigh.
You love my O face. You love my O face. If you didn't love my O face, why do you guzzle so much cum?
Republicans suppress the minority vote to keep Democrats home. I proved it, it's too embarassing to you. You'd rather eat my man-goo than debate that point.
Republicans suppress the minority vote because minorities are Democrats. Also, Pudge supports a racist party. I'm not going to say that Pudge is a racist, because he's probably, very very likely, not racist at all. His party sure is though. How does it feel that someone like me is disgusted by you?
No point in arguing anymore, Pudge just wants to stubbornly ignore the facts that I posted. All that's left is name calling. Pudge, why didn't you just come out and say what an asshole you are right up front and save us some time? I could have been stroking my man meat into your gullet 4 posts ago!
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Go away. I'm faithful to one man at a time. Right now, it's Pudge. Pudgy wudgy Pudge is the man for me. You'll just have to wait your turn.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Republicans suppress the minority vote to keep Democrats home.
False.
I proved it
Also false. Not only did you not prove it, you did not present anything which, even if true, could have possibly proved it.
Also, Pudge supports a racist party.
No; I am a not a Democrat.
How does it feel that someone like me is disgusted by you?
I don't understand the question. I have no feeling on the matter, and cannot imagine why I would, or if I did, what it could possibly be.
Pudge just wants to stubbornly ignore the facts that I posted
Also false. Indeed, the only "facts" you posted, I directly addressed, and proved them to be, in fact, not facts.
Uuuuuuunnnggghhh. Wow, that was a sticky gob of jizz. It's in your eye.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Is this the 4400 and you're from Civil War times
No one from The 4400 came from earlier the 20th century.
when the Democrats and Republicans were reversed from what they are now?
No, they weren't.
Or are you just a moron?
You really think the Republicans are racist, and the Democrats are not? If so, well, that's pretty damned sad.
Notice that the KKK publically supported Bush in the 2004 election.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I don't watch the show, I just know it's about people pulled from the past into the future. If you continue this point as a form of attack, I'm going to just ignore it.
... affirmative action is by definition racist.
"Attack"? You said something incorrect, I corrected it. If you think that's an "attack," you're in the wrong place.
Considering that Republicans are the ones pushing the racist bills, yes.
False. There is not a single racist bill the GOP is pushing.
And I don't know what you mean about affirmative action
Notice that the KKK publically supported Bush in the 2004 election.
And Jhon pointed out, that's a really stupid argument, even if it's true. Communists and other people with horrific ideologies support the Democrats. This is a combination of the ad hominem and straw man logical fallacies: the genetic fallacy.