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Will the Next Election Be Hacked?
plasmacutter writes to let us know about the new article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone, following up on his "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" (slashdotted here). Kennedy recounts the sorry history of electronic voting so far in this country — and some of the incidents will be new even to this clued-in crowd. (Had you heard about the CERT advisory on an undocumented backdoor account in a Diebold vote-tabulating database — crediting Black Box Voting?) Kennedy's reporting is bolstered by the accounts of a Diebold insider who has gone on record with his concerns. From the article: 'Chris Hood remembers the day in August 2002 that he began to question what was really going on in Georgia... "It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from [president of Diebold election unit Bob] Urosevich...' According to Hood, Diebold employees altered software in some 5,000 machines in DeKalb and Fulton counties, the state's largest Democratic strongholds. The tally in Georgia that November surprised even the most seasoned political observers. (Hint: Republicans won.)
Why can't you just get it through your head
It's over, it's over now
Yes, you heard me clearly now I said
It's over, it's over now
I'm not really over you
You might say that
I can't take it, I can't take it
Lord, I swear I just can't take it no more
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
the process is over. It doesn't matter who votes for who, it only matters who counts the votes.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Any hope that the patch code is available?
I guess that's true. You never hear Republicans complaining about these voting machines. Therefore, they must work "perfectly".
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
exit polls.
they have always been acurate to a very slim margin, yet they were off by hundreds of thousands of votes in 2004. think about it - oh wait sorry, the apathy, i forgot.
Once upon a time, Slashdot was a non-political website that posted stories about the latest computer hardware, gadgets, and other aspects of geek culture. But that all changed when a Republican became President, and now Slashdot's tagline really should be "Anti-Republican/pro leftist Nerds and for nerds". They don't even try to balance the coverage, the slant is so obvious.
With the Bin laden story Taco posted today from left field, I realize that Election Day must be coming soon, and the "politics" news will overshadow any other postings on the front page.
Once upon a time, Taco himself said this kind of stuff doesn't belong on slashdot.
You'd think with the evidence and coincidences that are showing up, that people may actually think these guys have something it say. Instead, some of you just dismiss it as BS. I'm a card carrying libertarian, and I'm siding with the liberals on this one. There's something fishy going on here, and I think it should be investigated.
I wonder, if the positions were reversed and you felt you were losing your country, would you:
A. Still give a fuck?
B. Be outraged that fellow citizens don't listen to you, just because they have a different stance on abortion?
Maybe we should take Fidel Castro up on his offer to monitor U.S. Elections.
Or bring the United Nations in on it.
It seems like the main difference between a certain 1st world country and many 3rd world ones is the scale of election fraud, not the type or quality.
International monitors anyone?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The winner will be whoever is most in the interest of The Establishment. That will determine whether crucial issues such as voter fraud even enter the national debate. One must wonder why the NY Times and Washington Post, supposed "liberal media" centerpieces, do not even confront the likely truth -- that the last two elections were likely stolen. Isnt a full investigation in the national interest? Or is that just unpatriotic?
Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich, a Republican, ran into stiff opposition after (Diebold?) voting machines caused major problems in the state's primary elections this year. Ehrlich wanted to switch to paper-based methods that were known to be reliable. The opposition was NOT from his own party, but from the state's Democratic majority and career bureaucrats.
Absoutely. There will be wide margins in exit polls for Democrats and the Republicans will win anyway. They'll blatantly steal it and dare us to say it was stolen.
See, they've already tested the waters on the "will anyone believe an election is stolen" question. (Whether the 2004 election was stolen or not.) They know the general public will not believe it to be stolen, no matter how compelling the evidence.
So 2006 is a wash.
Given the lack of any public outcry regarding the known issues with these machines, the only conclusion to draw is that people don't care.
The last two presidential elections were hacked. Remember the "infamous" butterfly ballot, made by a Democrat. Bzzzt. Wrong. The Democrat who made the confusing ballot for a high elderly population in a swing area of the state of Florida was a recently converted Republican. Within months of succeeding with her confusing ballot design, she went right on back to the Republicans and even ran for Congress. Of course, it helped to have Bush's brother as governor of the state and the Supreme Court intervening to stop the mandated (under the law of Florida) counting of the vote.
In 2004, we have Diebold getting plum government contracts around the country to make "voting machine". Look it up and see what the President of Diebold, a die-hard Republican, said about using his machine to deliver the election to George Bush. Then do a little investigation of Ohio and its secretary of state's successful attempts to disenfranchise the voters there (read up on his suddenly-required abnormally thick paper be used for submission of absentee votes).
If anyone thinks a future election is in danger of being hacked, they haven't looked very close at the last two presidential elections.
Since Diebold has a crappy track record with electronic voting, why should we as consumers have any confidence in their ATMs? Even if you don't buy that elections have been stolen, there's enough evidence that Diebold is at best sloppy with their design, implementation and support of their voting machines. With a corporate attitude this lax, how can any banking customer feel good about how Diebold treats money transactions? I've noticed Diebold rolling out more complex ATMs with a lot of useless features. It's not a positive trend.
Actually, a few weeks back, Slashdot covered how Maryland Governor Ehrlich (R) was trying to seek an injunction on the use of Diebold machines.
The reality of the situation is that it's not a Democrat/Republican thing.....it's a power thing. If a Democrat were in office, the Republicans would be shouting vote fraud, etc.
Hey, don't offer evidence contrary to the standing line of crap around slashdot... we're not really interested in proof... We just support our own little fantasies and make up things to make ourselves feel good.
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
American exit polls have never been that accurate. Their margins of error have come down somewhat, but statistically speaking they have never been "accurate to a very slim margin".
When Edison first made an vote counting machine, the patent office rejected his invention citing concerns that could lead to vote tampering and yet, over a hundred years later, we have all of these problems...Maybe we should just GET RID OF ELECTRONIC VOTING until somebody can make uncrackable DRM software.
Whether it's republicans stealing elections or democrats, the election process can't be trusted. How do we institute an entirely new process that can verified by third parties and is resistant to tampering? Well.. violent revolution anyone? :P
-- One must wonder why the NY Times and Washington Post, supposed "liberal media" centerpieces, do not even confront the likely truth -- that the last two elections were likely stolen. --
Because there is no evidence.
I don't mind the idea of electronic voting, just be sure to give me a printout of my vote in plain english with a tracking number so that I can validate it later on. We cannot just take them at their word on this. This is one of the few cases where I think a paper trail is a must!
2 left biased politcal stories on the frontpage, I wonder how much karma conservatives are gonna lose today. By modding conservative posts as a troll, you admit that you are afraid of the truth.
Considering there is no unbiased proof (yes, speculation and people pushing an overly biased agenda don't count) that the 2006 election was stolen, I doubt there is any point to discussing whether the next one will be. No system is perfect and there is always room for improvement, but there is a line between constructive comments and conspiracy theories.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
Cuyahoga County is where Cleveland is located. The county is using Diebold machines and Cleveland was seen as the area that gave Bush the votes needed to win in the 2004 presidential election. Draw your own conclusions.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Only a nonpartisan, centrist voice like Robert F. Kennedy is unbiased enough to announce that only the Republicans engage in voter fraud, trickery, and manipulation. There's no corruption in the Democratic party - hasn't Air America Radio taught us anything?
:/
Another great article, kdawson.
The US government outright refused to allow the UN to monitor the 2004 election. They won't let any monitoring happen at all, no matter what the citizens want.
Can you imagine the government's reaction if Venezuela refused election monitoring?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Doesn't seem very clever to me. All very secret, all very hush hush, giving responsibility to a chosen few.
With paper, it's open to hundreds of eyes.
Deleted
Because there is no evidence.
There is evidence. Like the evidence of the face on mars, Area 51, and Roswell.
We have a paper trail.
We just don't give a fuck. The Prime Minister of Hungary is caught admitting to lying to the public about the economy on tape and Hungarians are out RIOTING (including tear gas!) in the streets. Our President has all but been caught lying about everything, royally fucking up everthing he's touched in the process, and the best we can muster is Bill Clinton, Richard Clarke, and Cindy Sheehan.
Agreed. People have way too much faith that some 'Woodward' type journo will just stand up and sort it all out automatically. That was then, this is now. There has been no evidence that any of the mainstream liberal media is prepared (or allowed?) to question some of today's thorny issues.
I've done my own reading too, and it seems highly likely that the last 2 elections were stolen. That means the US is in the middle of an ongoing coup and it's going to take a lot more than typing on teh interweb to sort it out. How long will it take for this realization to become mainstream? Can it become mainstream without the MSM to help? Is this going to be the time the internet comes to our rescue by enlightening more or more people or will society simply become more polarised until some sort of civil war starts?
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I find it really ironic that a Kennedy, of all people, should be warning people about election fraud.
Especially with what happened in Chicago when "John F" was "elected".
And I find it particularly sad that the people who are warning about election fraud don't want to do a damn thing to prevent people from voting twice (or more....Just witness what happens in Wisconsin).
Don't want fraud? Simple: Give people free state-issued id cards, and make them prove who they are when they vote. Do it by paper ballot. And enforce the election fraud laws when someone is caught tampering with ballots.
Other countries at least make you dip your finger in ink that lasts a few days when they vote. They should at least do that here.
Maybe we should just GET RID OF ELECTRONIC VOTING until somebody can make uncrackable DRM software.
DRM has no place in an election. DRM is about restricting the rights of a computer owner. WiMP, for example, has DRM but the OS that uses it is still unfit for network use. DRM is not what the local election commission needs to keep elections honest.
What they need is free and secure software. If the software is free, it can be inspected by anyone with any doubt. If it's secure, inspections won't harm the vote. The problem is that Dibold and M$ own the software used in voting machines and anyone using them has to take the machine's honesty as a mater of faith rather than knowledge. That kind of centralized power is easy to abuse. When election commissions use free software, they own the equipment and can verify it's honesty. This increases the number of people overseeing the process, which makes it exponentially more difficult to rig. The public should accept nothing less.
Only a free election will be an honest election.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
My guess, though, is that Republicans would agree to this but Democrats wouldn't, because Democrat vote fraud is widespread and well-established, while Republican vote fraud is rare or is, as in the recent electronic voting machine cases, still hypothetical. Can you say Reconstruction? Only the largest and longest case of vote fraud the country has ever seen.
And chances are, it would be just as nonsensical as this.
It's similar to "AIMBOTZ!" and "HAX" in online gaming.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
This article would be a lot more intriguing as a fair criticism of the voting process if it didn't have such a deep anti-capitalist bias. Much of the author's criticisms stem from the suggestion that private companies cannot possibly implement a functional and transparent electronic voting system. This would imply that the government itself would naturally be much more effective in this role, which is absolutely ludicrous when considering its innumerable other failures.
The voting process should absolutely be more transparent, but this doesn't preclude the involvement of private firms providing technological solutions. The possibility for fraud because of a lack of government oversight and security is exactly that, not entirely the failings of electronic voting systems.
I always forget what a bunch of delusional retards generally are here posting.
WELCOME TO EARTH!
"and some of the incidents will be new even to this clued-in crowd"
Clued in crowd? You mean the crowd that believes conspiracies lay at everyones doorstep? Tell you what... there are plenty of movies to watch that will fulfill your need for that, you don't even need to leave your house. Whatever else you do, please do everyone a favor and revoke your internet access.
Thank god for digg.com At least when stupid posts like this are submitted they can be buried.
WHY OH WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE ALLOWED TO BREED? Please don't answer that... you've already said far too much. kthxbye.
wow.. you're very deluded.. and are hell bent against your own interests.
Democrats are no more "condescending" than the elitist republican snobs are, but there is a difference.. while all politicians regardless of party are annoyingly disconnected with the common man, the democratic party has been centered for the majority of the 20th century on the idea that if you're a worker then they will make sure you're middle class, that you can afford to send your kids to college, and that you'll have the spare cash to engage in that one expensive hobby you want to.
Republicans want to eliminate the middle class, they shout "moral values" and demonize "democratic condescension".. then turn around and destroy the basis of the "flyover country's" income streams.. then turn around and scream "class warfare" when democrats try to take 1 million of the waltons' 100 trillion dollar annual budget to help feed the poor.
Think about it before you go off on rants about the great democratic conspiracy. You're not sticking it to the man when you vote republican, youre sticking it to yourself.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I lived in Atlanta, Georgia from 1998-2004, and moved to Augusta, GA a couple months ago. To say that the Georgia election was "stolen" neglects that Georgia has heeled way to the right politically over the last 5 years or so, to the point where the teachers' union did not endorse the Democrats in 2002 (I do not think they went so far as to endorse Republican candidates, but the damage was done). To say that Democrats should always win traditionally Democratic districts (or groups, e.g. teachers) neglects harsh reality: as long as they rest on their laurels, thinking they will always win the traditional districts (e.g., downtown Atlanta), they will be very vulnerable to the intense Republican smear machine that is grinding away here. This, more than anything, is why Republicans are gaining ground. To blame election rigging smacks of desparation: we used punch cards in 1998 and 2000, and look how well those worked in Florida! It's just as easy to rig punch cards as electronic voting machines, just the former is slightly more labor intensive. Plus, gas prices are down again, and there have been few military casualties in Iraq lately, so unless the Democratic party starts hammering on their traditional domestic issues (labor, education, health care), they will lose again, at least in Georgia.
Still, several Georgia counties were experimenting with ScanTron ballots prior to the statewide Diebold deal. This system has several advantages; notbaly, there is a paper trail. On the whole, I'd feel a little better if that is the system they had gone with for statewide electronic voting.
Raising funds / winning elections. There is a cause/effect relationship here folks. Wake up, smell the roses, elections are just like anything else in america, sold to the highest offer. If that wasn't the case, then fund raising wouldn't be the most critical part of an election campaign.
If you have a tracking number, there is the possibility that voters can be bought or threatened into voting a certain way.
I tell you that unless you vote for Mr. X, I will break your legs. You go vote and I demand your tracking number (or I break your legs anyway). I can verify that you voted how I wanted you to.
The best paper trail is for the voting machine to spit out a form/card/whatever with the name of the person you voted for printed/punched on it. Then you drop that into a locked box. Later, that locked box is opened in front of anyone who wants to watch and the votes are sorted and counted.
We have the technology to do that already.
But it seems that having an easily verifiable paper trail is not something that our politicians are interested in.
!!!! Again with the "slant!" Fine, post something with a pro-Right slant. If the Editors won't post as a headline, post as reply. You posted AC, it won't hurt you! Refute the story, PLEASE! Isn't anyone else horrified by the implications that EITHER side could steal this election?
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
So had I voted, it wouldn't have counted.
Seems I was right. Not that I liked either canidate. Kerry back'ed out to soon, showing even he was approving Bush.
There was no election, only an illusion of one.
Perhaps the US government needs to be honest to the people it is supposed to represent.
No president has ever been impeached.... why is that? The system doesn't work as intended.
The government should fess up about who was really responsible for the anthrax attacks on the media.
Though it should be obvious it didn't have to be a conspiracy, just one military personal who had enough clearance, rank and knowledge as to how to deal with anthrax, to not be questioned when he took a very small amount, hardly noticable, from the military base.
What kind of country is this that does such things?
Oh I know, They wanted to show the terrorist that they can be worse then the terrorist.
Terrorising the terrorist...
Yeah, America is safer now.....Bush said so.
I understand the military is going to try out some new non-lethal weapons on Americans first.....
What really started the chain of events leading to 9/11 was wrongful world economic manipulation via world stock market manipulation --- google "trillion dollar bet" and read the transcript. Know where dot com boom money came from and what really caused the bust and failures like Enron, Worldcom and the likes...
Politically controlled military backed worngful world economic manipulation.... What were the three targets of 9/11?
Did it really make a difference whether or not the election was real or a hacked? NO as the real problem is clearly larger than that,
We have a government that has enough power to threaten the media that most americans listen to and believe. To threaten the media into saying whatever the government wants it to say.
Ultimately any exposure of this reality will accomplish what?
How could americans remove the lil'hitler adminastration?
So the answer is that this country has turned into a dictatorship under the guise of a democracy.
It has become the evil it claims to be fighting against.
And there is not a damn thing the American People can do about it. Mainly because most don't believe it.
When you know your voe doesn't count, will you still vote?
It may well be that elections, op-ed columns and snarky blogs won't make a damn bit of difference any more. It may well be that as a nation we have lost all ability to rein in an out-of-control government intent on consolidating absolute power over our lives.
It may well be that it will take an uprising of unprecedented proportions if we can ever again expect to have a free United States of America.
This breaks my heart, because as the son and grandson of immigrants, of veterans, of union members who spent their lives working in support of a nation of free people. I was taught that as an American we have a blessed status as people who actually control their government, not the other way around.
But with the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 and the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004, we have entered a period where those that are in power have decided that their constituents live and work only at their pleasure, and that real power flows from their government down to us, instead of the other way around, which was the belief of the Founding Fathers.
We have lived through a decade when the people who are entrusted with our government have brazenly grabbed power and wealth and DON'T EVEN CARE THAT WE KNOW IT.
I'm afraid it's going to take people, citizens, lots of them in the streets. Angry and willing to break the social contract to take back their rightful position as the source of the government's power. "Of the people, by the people and for the people" was the way the great men of the Enlightenment expressed it. "For the rich and on the people's necks" is the way the emergent Right-Wing in America have twisted it. And the worst of it is the decent working people of middle America have had their vision twisted by a Public Relations machine so powerful that they will willingly vote against their own interests. I have a home in Rolla, Missouri, and I've seen it with my own eyes. Mothers whose children have given their lives in Iraq shedding tears and proud in the belief that their children avenged 9/11 by invading Iraq - because Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh told them it was so.
It breaks my heart but it might just take people, a lot of people, in the streets and willing to disobey the law to express their unwillingness to allow their nation to descend into an authoritarian nightmare. It might take general strikes, civil unrest and maybe a few bombs being thrown for us to once again see the light of freedom burning in this Land.
It's happened before.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've seen enough evidence to never vote electronically again.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
1) Exit polling is not affected by demographics, only by those who vote.
2) Christians are not all anti-gay and Republican.
3) Gays had the right to vote then and have the right to vote now.
By electing this President and this Congress, you red-staters have made us in New York City more vulnerable, not less, to terrorism. And still you red-state tourists come to Ground Zero and wave your fucking red-state flags while smiling and posing in front of the pit. Ever stop to wonder why even after 9/11, the Manhattan vote goes as solidly to Democrats as ever?
Fuck you. Your vote is making the world less safe.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
It might help if most of you weren't redneck, nascar, trailerpark idiots who elected the worst President in our history TWICE. It would also help if you didn't equate stealing elections with getting someone you didn't like elected.
>Will the Next Election Be Hacked?
Yes if the dems loose...ANYTIME a dem looses they cry foul play.
And here I am, in Brazil. Just voted this afternoon and we already have 87% of the votes (about 124 million people voted) processed and in a few hours we will know the results. Sure, less than 1% of the voting machines had problems, and were they had we used paper voting. Electronic voting works just fine :)
The current results (ipdated every 5 minutes):
http://eleicoes.folha.uol.com.br/folha/especial/20 06/eleicoes/apuracao1.html
Typing too fast
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Large cities have crime because they're large cities, not because they're run by Democrats. People in large cities tend to vote Democrat/liberal because living in close proximity with a lot of other people gives you first-hand evidence that you have to have some sense of cooperation and tolerance in order to get along. It's all well and good to Vote Jesus when you live in a town of 50 people, but taking the same thing to Chicago or New York just doesn't work.
Can I "whiiiiinnneeeeeee" about it when the next Republican gets unfairly and illegally elected into office, and blows even more of this nation's future on groundless wars and funding Christian programs with public money? When exactly does going directly against the constitution become something I'm allowed to "whiinnnnneeeeee" about?
Also, your statement about the electoral college is bullshit. Low population doesn't necessarily mean the population is not concentrated in cities and thus more likely to vote Democrat. Washington has the Seattle metro, and Spokane, and the other 95% of the counties in the state vote Republican, but it's still a heavily blue state when everything's counted up.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I just wanted to point out an interesting method of creating a secure paper trail that came out recently (September 28th 2006) by Ronald L. Rivest of M.I.T's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It's called the ThreeBallot Voting System (.pdf format).
The interesting thing about it is that it handles both voter privacy and verifiability without requiring encryption of the ballot. Rather than give a poor explanation because of lack of space (the paper itself is 13 pages long), I encourage interested people to read it.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
I don't care what political party you are in (or which party you hate).
Honest elections should NOT be a political issue. It should be a PATRIOTIC issue.
We need a list of requirements for honest elections and we, THE PEOPLE, need to work with each other to get them implemented.
I don't care if you're Liberal or Republican or Libertarian or Communist or Green. I will gladly work with you for honest elections in America. You may beat my favoured Party, but we should all be able to see that it was an honest election and an honest victory.
Shouldn't this nullify all elections that used Diebold equipment forcing a special election (not using Diebold equipment of course)?
because we all know how unbiased and meticulous the press is.
How do you know it was actually democrats who were opposing him.. is this like the "democrats" who screwed up the response to katrina.. you know.. the democratic governor who was somehow magically in charge of fema..
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
So? They probably figured out how to hack the machines and not be detected better than the Republicans.
Doesn't make it right.
Does this mean you're against anything the Democrats are for?
They are reasonable people; logical, they cite evidence, numbers, and are thoroughly credible. That's what I hate about the GOP as it stands; it relies on big noise, all-on-message-now, on-and-on advertising-style repetition of nonsense phrases such as "hates america", "helps the terrorists".
the rest of us in "flyover" country, are redneck,nascar,trailerpark idiots that can't hold a job.
Well, three out of four isn't that bad, eh.
Yes. That's exactly why we need a system that's verifiable and difficult to manipulate. When you have two sides that will do anything to win, you remove any way to cheat that you possibly can.
Sure USA beats Zimbabwe etc, but you'd hope the aspirations of most Americans is to be compared with the top few rather than the bottom few.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As a McCain Republican (you know, a real Republican, not a Bushie) I'd ask: what about Bush's crew lying about WMD evidence? How about fabricated memos planted by the CIA? When are they going to be held responsible for 2500 of my comrades dying and a half trillion in debt? Hmmm? Pot, meet kettle.
Once again, Clinton lied about a blowjob and Bush lied about the premise on which an entire war has been waged. So you'll excuse us if a party of centrists from the left and centrists from the right call you on your righteous bullshit.
I hope one of you jokers does rig the election. Give 100% to somebody, I don't even care who. Then there will be no choice but to deal with the Diebold issue.
No, the Democrats lose because the party has not been able to put up someone inspiring (or hell, electable) since Clinton (Or arguably JFK). Say what you want about Clinton or Regan, they both inspired people, and both convinced the majority of voters (not tiny contestable majority either) to get the job. Bush sucks, but he keeps his job because (1) his opponents have somehow managed to be less appealing than him and (2) the Democrat party has basically become the "oppose Bush" party. No real ideas of their own, no "contract with America" style plan to recapture the votes, just oppose Bush at every turn. Don't get me wrong, if Bush and co keep screwing up that eventually will work, but he probably could have been easily beaten (election fraud or not) if there were some kind of leadership or direction in the Democratic party.
Finkployd
Why hack the election when you can just steal it the old fashioned way?
* Give poor voting precincts ancient machines and very few of them so that people have to wait hours and hours in line to vote. Isn't that what we saw in 2004?
* Dream up a system of "provisional ballots" to placate voters when a voter is "challenged" -- and then never count those provisional ballots.
These tactics are the way the past 2 elections were stolen, and they're profusely documented. Even the huge exit poll discrepancies of the 2004 elections were ignored by the US corporate mass media.
And don't forget the way BBC reporter Greg Palast clearly documented that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris eliminated more than 90,000 Florida voters in 2000 as "suspected felons" -- with over 90% of those voters being Democrats. But you're read about that scandal in the US corporate mass media, right?! (Not!)
Sorry, the elections are already being "hacked" and it doesn't take an electronic voting machine to do it.
Do republican coders use VI and democrat coders use Emacs? Or is it the other way around?
Rock the Vote .. pff ... Why rock when you can hack?!
of the American electorate.
:~(
Clearly, we've failed.
I'm sure you will remember this when your state's election machines get hacked by some lefty and you end up with Howard Dean as your governor, despite the fact that all the exit polls showed him getting 3% of the vote. Remember your rule: if your guy lost the election, it's YOUR FAULT. Claiming fraud is just loser talk.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Stalin once said, "It's not who votes that counts; it's who counts the votes."
the democratic party has been centered for the majority of the 20th century on the idea that if you're a worker then they will make sure you're middle class, that you can afford to send your kids to college, and that you'll have the spare cash to engage in that one expensive hobby you want to.
That's why a majority of the middle class votes republican while a majority of the people on welfare and insanely rich people vote democrat, right? The democrats don't care about a healthy middle class. They never have. What they care about is setting up a permanent constituency via handouts paid for by the middle class. As for the ultra rich folks, well, they just feel guilty so they figure it'll wash their conscious clean.
Added bureaucracy and taxation doesn't hurt the rich - they have accountants, lawyers, etc handle it all for them. It hurts the families who live on $25-70k a year. If the democrats wanted to help the middle class, they would get the huge unconstitutional federal government off their back.
. . . if they are claiming election fraud on Oct 1st. This is just sad. Plus, all credibility was lost when Cynthia McKinney claimed election fraud when she was trounced by another democrat after hitting a cop with a cell phone. You can't keep crying wolf. Democrats keep losing elections, and instead of blaming themselves, looking at themselves, they blame Fox News, or butterfly ballots or voting machines. Just sad to watch.
Your statement is only true if you assume that violence against America from muslim Arabs would not have occured or cease to occur if it were not for the Republicans, Iraq, Afghanistan or George W. Bush.
In my view of how the world functions, where a clash of civilisations (Islam vs non-islam) is pretty much inevitable due to the specific content of that religion and its holy books, 'provocation' against Islam does not contribute to global conflict because that global conflict would have come further down the line anyway. This is actually a much better way of it happening.
According to causal logic, a criteria for one action to 'cause' another action is that if you remove the first action the second would not take place - a criterion which is, in my view, not fulfilled here. Yes, the manifestation would not have been 9/11, but it would have been lots of other bad things.
You are aware that there were bombings against American interests (a pretty way of saying 'bombings that kill Americans') long before Afghanistan, Iraq and 9/11, right?
Rigging elections undermines everything this country stands for. It is, in a very real definition of the word, treason. Anyone doing it. Anyone ordering it. Anyone knowing about it and not coming forward. Anyone who has taken an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States, has to take rigged elections as a direct challenge to the authority of that document. As a military person you took an oath to protect the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Someone rigging the ballot box would qualify as a domestic enemy.
That should be one thing we can all agree on. Democrat, Republican, Independent or any other party. Without fair elections we are no longer the United States of America. We are something less.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I have... and our results were off by a quite a bit.
Why? I can think of a few reasons:
1. It takes time. It usually takes about 10-15 minutes to fill out a good exit poll form. People with less time on their hands - people with steady jobs, people with kids, people who vote in the morning on the way to work, etc. - are much less likely to accept the polling sheet. On the other hand, people with lots of time on their hands - the retired, the unemployed, often younger voters, etc. - are much more likely to fill out exit poll forms. Given that the unemployed are more likely to vote a certain way (generally for the opposition party, whoever that may be), this can lead to skewed data, not to mention other groups.
2. People fill out polls to make a statement. Again, this tends to favor opposition parties, or parties that are less likely to be represented in a region. People like the idea of voting twice.
3. The organization you poll for could determine who answers your questions. Example - "Hi, I'm performing a poll for University X! Could I take ten minutes of your time?" If the person you are trying to poll doesn't like your university's football team, they may not participate. Or, if a poller represents a news organization the person dislikes, a potential pollee (?) may opt out as well.
4. People honestly forget. This doesn't happen so much in presidential elections, to be sure, but on many exit polls people mark their own votes wrong because they forget what proposition x was or who the candidates for a seat on whatever were.
As someone who has worked exit polls before, let me assure you that they're not always accurate and there are a LOT of things that can throw them off.
In any case, though, the CNN exit poll data from 2004 should make the case for a Bush win, if you go by exit poll data alone.
What incentive is there to tell the truth at exit polls? I have a right to keep my vote private, and the only way to do that is to randomly lie.
Keep an eye on the exit polls.. at the very last minute drive in and "Re-Hack" the diebold machines to reflect the exit polls!
as those guinness guys would say, Brilliant!
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You may be right... there may be nothing to this but paranoia and sour grapes on the part of Democrats that lost.
But with Diebold style machines, how can anyone ever prove otherwise? With no paper trail, this issue is going to come up in every single election. The loser will claim that the election was stolen, and there will be no way for anyone to prove that it didn't happen.
That's why we need systems where the results are open to public inspection/recount and difficult to hack. Paper ballots meet this criteria. Electronic machines with a voter-verified paper trail meet this criteria. Diebold machines do not. Even if we assumed that every person involved with those machines was in fact 100% honest and above cheating, they'd still be unusable as an electoral mechanism, because every election result would be suspect.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The democrats don't care about a healthy middle class. They never have. What they care about is setting up a permanent constituency via handouts paid for by the middle class.
so this is why the bush tax cuts shifted most of the tax burden to the middle class and away from the ultra rich and eliminated the estate tax?
keep in mind the poor pay no taxes regardless.
Let's think logically.. who needs the money more.. the middle class or the very rich (and possibly very dead) mega upper class..
proliferate your right wing propaganda elsewhere, and don't you dare try to expound it as fact.
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would reading an article by the dimmmest wit of the Kennedy family count as getting clued in.
2. People fill out polls to make a statement. Again, this tends to favor opposition parties, or parties that are less likely to be represented in a region. People like the idea of voting twice.
Shouldn't have left this point so quickly without going for a deeper explanation. My mistake.
People like to show their support for a candidate they feel very strongly about more than once. Those who vote for Incumbents/members of the dominant party are, generally speaking of course, less passionate about the matter - they're happy with how things are. Those who vote for the opposition are more likely (although certainly not always) to feel strongly about the matter and want their opinion registered as much as possible.
"the idea of voting twice" was a misstatement on my part.
I believe the Diebold and other voting machines to be insecure, and built that way intentionally so that elections can be manipulated. Many of the hacks, and the ease and speed of which they can be completed, are already posted on-line. I think it needs to be proven to the whole country that these machines are fraudulent, and not to be trusted. Therefore, I think it would be funny to do the following protest:
Take one big district, say, Los Angeles, and hack the voting machines to have a massive write in land slide victory for Mickey Mouse. It would be crucial that the results are rigged to put Mickey in the lead by at least 80%, and to make sure that the total number of votes exceed the number of people in the voting district by at least 200%. Basically, make the results so ridiculously wrong that no one in their right mind could possibly consider the election valid. It would also be important to do this in a district that has NO paper trail so there cannot be a recount. Then just sit back, watch the news, and laugh.
First off Nixon and Clinton were both impeached. I don't know where you got your information.
Second, I don't see why a crazy conspiracy theorist who spouts misinformation and has nothing to support his claims is deemed informative.
Finally, go ahead and mod me down for flaming and offtopic but I am disappointed in some of the comments that have been moded up.
i find it interesting how many posts talk about how the democrats are doing the same thing. it's that sort of slippery slope justification that we, as humans, are most in danger of. just remember when you point your finger at someone, you've got the rest of them curled in, pointing straight back at yourself. that's why i only wave at people or flip them the bird.
in summation, "being rational is the salvation of humanity, rationalization its destruction." that's right, i'm quoting myself in the very first instance of my having said something. deal with it.
Your view of how the world functions is just plain fucking wrong, as anyone who lives in New York can tell you. The people you elected to represent us have done more to promote a misinterpreted version of Huntington's original "Clash of Civilizations" than Huntington himself ever did.
If you don't understand by now the ways in which this administration has made New York City more vulnerable to attack from abroad, you probably never will. Fuck you again for supporting those buffoons in our name, you self-righteous birdbrain.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
I guess that says it all about the right..,
Yeah, it is not over. We are on track for repeating history all over again. SO many loyal nazis^h^h^h^h^hrepublicans.
emocrats keep losing elections, and instead of blaming themselves, looking at themselves, they blame Fox News, or butterfly ballots or voting machines.
yeah.. and they have a good solidly backed point!
-fox news is a massive propaganda arm for the extreme right falsely advertising themselves as "fair and balanced".. i'm surprised the network has not been sued for libel or slander... oh that's right, a court packed with bush appointees.
-butterfly ballots.. let's see.. according to those brilliantly designed ballots a bunch of old jewish people voted for a raving ultra-rightist christian!.. i'd bet you'd be screaming the same thing if utah districts started voting for ted kennedy!
-There have been on camera demonstrations of complete novices.. career politicans who can't tell a circuit board from a chalk board, hacking diebold machines.. even on fox news!..
I wander.. if the situation were reversed.. oh forget it you'll just claim "no i wouldn't" even though we all know you'd be lying.
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While I doubt we agree on everything politically, you've hit the nail squarely on the head.
The U.S. needs a free market of ideas, and the Democrats' failure to come up with some kind of platform isn't just hurting their party, it's hurting the country.
I lean to the right, but I've certainly voted for Democrats and third party candidates before - more than my fair share, in fact. I voted for them because I liked their platform... and this requires having a platform, something the DNC seems incapable of creating at the present time.
Voting opposition for strictly contrarian purposes is not particularly desirable to me. Until I see a better platform than "we're the DNC, not the RNC, vote for me!", I'm not buying.
By modding conservative posts as a troll, you admit that you are afraid of the truth.
NO, what they are admitting is they don't believe in open discourse. Just because someone mods you down for your opinion, doesn't mean your opinion is the truth.
considering there is no unbiased proof (yes, speculation and people pushing an overly biased agenda don't count) that the 2006 election was stolen
Since when have "conservatives" been concerned about having unbiased proof and been against people pushing an overly biased agenda? Need you be reminded about the WMDs in Iraq, believed with no unbiased proof because people with an overly biased agenda simply claimed it?
No system is perfect and there is always room for improvement, but there is a line between constructive comments and conspiracy theories.
Do you consider the whole "Axis of Evil" claim constructive comments? Do you consider claims that liberals are trying to destroy the country constructive comments or conspiracy theories? Do you consider the implication that those who disagree with the ones pushing an overly biased agenda in washington are unpatriotic and/or traitors? Because even if you answer reasonably to any of these questions, so-called "conservatives have been very unreasonable with regards to these issues for the last several years.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
It really says something about Bush's charisma when he has to steal elections from both Gore and Kerry.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
The question isn't "will our election get hacked?", but "how many times will our voting system get hacked?" It certainly brings "Capture the Flag" to a higher level!
Anway, back in reality-land, why is the issue of hacking an election considered partisan? Are republicans not concerned that democrats could take advantage of these documented weaknesses in the elections systems?
I agree. In my opinion, the democratic party has been dying due to the large number of 'independant' style canidates they have been accepting into their ranks for the past several years. They now represent an extreme liberal point of view, which quite frankly can be downright frightening at times.
:(
:)
I'm pretty annoyed with both major parties at the moment, nearly every election I have the chance to vote in both canidates are complete morons and I am compelled to vote for the one who I think is going to make the fewest screwups rather than the person who I think will be a better leader.
Next election, vote Pirate Party!
Bummer. The news is good, the politics are so incredibly slanted here that it's sad.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
1st point: election officials should keep the voting record. This way they can compare the printout with the vote recorded in the database in the event of a recount. We want to allow for the possibility of recounts, right?
2nd point: if voting machines can't be trusted to keep accurate records, we shouldn't be using them. IMHO, considering that the financial sector has been using computers for nearly 40 years with a relatively high degree of accuracy makes me believe that the problem of accurate voting machines, while intractable, is not impossible. Do I need to point out that we have two robots on Mars at the moment?
I suppose you think that birth certificates are a flawed concept, too. After all, people make mistakes. They couldn't possibly be useful, right?
If the last election was stolen, why didn't Kerry's multimillionaire wife spend a few bucks to prove it? She didn't want to be the first lady?
I'm going to go with the path of least resistence here and say, "Because there's nothing to report."
First off, as others mentioned, 2 were impeached but not removed. In contrast, Nixon was about to be impeached AND he would have been removed. Back then, the dems controlled congress and most of the republicans had morals. Now, the republicans of today are actually neo-cons and I think that they have shown well their morals (think Foley, W., Libbey, Delay, Abramhoff, Rumsfield, etc). If the dems win 2/3 of congress (not likely), you can bet that W. will be impeached AND removed. But if not, then both parties will ignore the issues.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"yeah.. and they have a good solidly backed point!"
No they don't. You're full of shit.
kdawson really seems to like this topic... as pointed out in the summary, this was slashdotted two weeks ago on her watch.
/., but when one is discussing election results/poll data, they're the best source) must belong to the "elite echelons" of the upper class (Also... people with Ph.D's in fields like those you are speaking about also tend to be in the elite echelons of the upper class, because those degrees tend to cost you more money than you make from them (without the right connections, of course.. wink wink).. and you wander why they espouse elitist right wing values and are listened to by elitist right wing leaders? (source). I got a good laugh out of this then, and still do, especially considering my top 3 favorite political science professors are, in order: 1. a Democrat, 2. a Green, and finally 3. a Republican. And I attend one of the most conservative universities in the entire U.S.
This submission, furthermore, stems from "plasmacutter". In a mini-flame war between he and I (note - this is in response to my post, yes), he goes on to claim that:
- Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, Policy Review, and the Christian Science Monitor "have been thoroughly debunked as extreme right" (I'd love to know who did that bit of debunking, and just how they determine what's "extreme right") while considering Al Franken to be an "influential political thinker". (source)
- Apparently believes anyone who has a Ph.D., particularly in the political sciences (I realize the social sciences aren't popular here on
The submitter of the previous story was similarly a bit off his rocker.
In short, what we have here is kdawson publishing pretty much anything he or she likes about this matter to stir up debate and ad clicks, and all of it coming from that bastion of journalism, that peer-reviewed gem of western society, Rolling Stone.
Surely Slashdot can do better than this. There are LOTS of topics of interest to the left that could be covered in a decent manner. Why kdawson keeps banging away on this one note is baffling to me.
I recently saw a story on headline news.. the anchor went on and on on this diatribe about how "mexico is insistant upon interfering with US national security"..
then finally he gets to the point.. this "important issue of national security" he was babbling on and on about was a border fence
yes.. mexican opposition to a huge fence along its border is now "interferance with US national security" according to the "centerist" or "leftist" CNN..
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If it's really that easy to bribe someone on the inside and smuggle a virus in, someone should do it for real in the upcoming election. Produce an outcome for one state (say, that's fiercely Republican) which is 100% Democrat across all counties. Then someone might take notice.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
We definitely need new ideas. The two party system as it stands has just resulted in progressive extremism. Maybe it's time to switch to a primary/runoff system like that used in France? That is, the first round is a many-candidate ballot, and the top two vote-getters go to the runoff to decide who wins. That would greatly increase the chances for a third party candidate. Unfortunately, the entrenched politicians would have to approve of such an idea by enacting appropriate laws, so it will never happen.
It does not goes with the person for the reasons you state.
It serves as a paper ballot, so that the vote can be recounted by hand if the electronic count is challenged. Electronic vote is fast but black-box. Paper ballot is slow but verifiable by anyone (of any party).
When the vote is cast, the machine produces a paper record. The voter reads over the paper and makes sure it accurately represents their selections if it does they hit the "vote" button on the machine, and deposit the paper into a ballot box.
Parallel and redundant systems. Short of taking off and nuking from space, it's the only way to be sure.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Things to consider:
1) Both the 2000 and 2004 elections were VERY close. They ultimately came down a to a relatively thin margin of votes in select states. So we basically get into an uncertainty situation because we end up having to measure a vote exactly when the technology is rather imprecise (hanging chads, etc)
2) Electronic voting machines did not exist in significant quantities prior to the 2000 election. Given that there's no physical evidence to support the numbers that come out of the polls, it creates a definite sense of insecurity.
3) We have seen ample evidence of deliberate efforts by Republicans to distort the vote. In Ohio there were many fewer polling machines made available to typically Democratic districts. They also gave people registration forms that were invalid, then said they wouldn't accept them. Also don't forget the phone bank jamming scheme in New Hampshire that hamstrung get out the vote efforts by Democrats.
4) Gerrymandering of districts has meant that the margins of victory have shrunk in many locations. You gerrymander by dividing up opposition support accross enough of your own candidates. So you end up with two of your candidates winning by say 5% rather than having one win by 10% and the other narrowly lose.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Anway, back in reality-land, why is the issue of hacking an election considered partisan? Are republicans not concerned that democrats could take advantage of these documented weaknesses in the elections systems?
I want a paper ballot with some security features built in (ie, on special paper that is watermarked). You must circle a name completely with a distinct oddball colored marker (perhaps teal). If you cannot circle a single name, your vote doesn't count because you're an utter moron. I want you to have to show your free, state provided ID to prove you have the right to vote before you get your ballot. I want the media to not report on any status of the election until, oh, maybe the next morning when all the polling stations are closed and the vote has been counted. Poll workers are allowed to use ballpoint pens and pencils to tally the vote and cannot have any markers in the room during such time. The ballots will be placed in a box which is secured with a lock provided by one of the two major parties which is again, placed into a box locked by a padlock by the other major party.
That seems pretty straight forward and honest to me. However, people won't go for it... especially the part about requiring a free state provided ID because that means it gets a little harder to vote early and vote often.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
has any election not been rigged since George Washington? hacking isn't just on computers, social engineering is what politicians do every day.
-Noc
Feel free to vote in the primaries, too. I don't know where this idea comes from that there's only two candidates to choose from.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
The only reason you are more vunerable in New York is because the NYTimes wants to leak National Security Secrets, the ACLU doesn't want terrorists tortured by turning the air conditioning off or people searched in subways. Those ain't red state people.
Say what you want about Clinton or Regan, they both inspired people, and both convinced the majority of voters (not tiny contestable majority either) to get the job.
FWIW (and it's not worth much), Clinton did not receive
a majority of the popular vote in either of his Presidential
elections. He won a majority of the Electoral College each
time, which is exactly what he needed to do to win, but
in each race there was no popular vote majority due to
significant votes case for a third party, Ross Perot's
Reform Party.
Wow, I just can't finish this one up... The point of exit polling isn't to determine how elections will turn out - they're not really great at that - but to determine WHO votes for WHOM. It's to collect socio-economic data and match that to voting behavior. Not to predict elections. This information cannot be gathered as people vote for obvious legal and other reasons, so this is probably the most effective way to really see who votes and what could compel them to vote a certain way. I know the media has grabbed onto the idea that these polls are, for some rason, the perfect way to guess a winner, but they really aren't.
Cynthia McKinney is an idiot. Please don't hold her up as an example of a Democrat crying wolf, just hold her up as an example of a stupid human being.
called truevote or some such. Basicly you voted by touch screen the computer printed out two pieces of paper. Once you saw that all three (the monitor and both sheets of paper) things had the same vote you confirmed it. One paper goes to you with a telephone number you can call to make sure your vote got counted and one dropped into a lock box which was the actualy vote. He mysteriously died in a car accident.
In his words:
Here in the UK we use old-fashioned paper ballots, hand counted. No tabulating machines, no hanging chads, no technology at all. In a General Election, the polls close at 10PM and the earliest constituencies usually declare their results around 1AM. By 8AM the next morning there are only a few left to declare and the result is known. This is in a country of some 60 million people - there is no reason why it couldn't scale up to the US population. Why complicate things and introduce more potential for fraud?
YES!
Gawd please let fluffy the bear carry this election in a landslide, because nothing would get the system snapped into state like having CLEAR evidence of the vote being hacked.
Consider this a call to throw the election. Make everyone vote the Jedi ticket. Cmdr Taco carries the house and the senate. Whatever it takes, just make sure that it is so flipping obvious that it has to be fixed.
Flamebait? No, democrats are just cunts.
ASSASINATE BUSH
I assume it has already been hacked.
The winner's name is in an envelope at Fox News.
"Rigging elections undermines everything this country stands for. It is, in a very real definition of the word, treason."
These guys just got rid of Hebeas Corpus for god's sake. They just ripped apart our entire legal system!!!!.
Apparently that's not enough to get anybody excited though. As long as you don'g get blown in the white house you can do whatever the fuck you want including shredding the constitution and torturing people.
evil is as evil does
There isn't going to be any more "elections".
If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator. GWB. CNN.com, December 18, 2000
You americans are fucked now... the rest of us will be fucked later.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Loser talk!? i always find it entertaining how politics have been made out to be a cultured version of sports. Losers, Winners, loyalties w/o qualifications (See article on MSNBC (yea i know its leftist but it was an article w/ references) on how IrAq turned out so terrible because many qualified people were replaced by misguided simpletons whose only qualifications were an unrelenting loyalty to the republican party and its current school of thought), and a willingness to employ a all or nothing metality (AKA "leaving it all on the court" -Alanzo Mourning). I think its depsicable. I'm with plato on this one, democracies are like college girls, they blow hard (and thats about it) (i'm paraphrasing Plato ; (hell, it might be aristotle or someone, but i'm pretty sure plato was against Democracy). Anyway, u know its bad when the Economist decides write an article about how the US political system is looking more and more aritocratic. I think its interesting how neither party talks about Horatio Alger or his modern day equivalent. Instead, their rhetoric exudes Fear tactics.......... it seems to me that every American feels he is so comfortable that even if God himself/herself/itself (i'm an atheist) told them the system is getting fucked, there's still a 50% chance they won't get up off their ass. Like an earlier post said "being rational is the salvation of humanity, rationalization its destruction". Some of the accusations don't even allow for plausable deniability, yet the public feels to safe to think twice about it. now here comes the truly subjective line of this post : i hate humanity w/ an powerfully entrenched malice
Res Ipsa Loquitor "The facts speak for themselves"
because politics can be more complicated than that?
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Vote from the rooftops!
Their totally loopy and insane defense of illegal aliens, the outright invasion that has happened. Since when do Democrats "support" billionaire asscracks? That is exactlywat is causing the invasion from places like mexico, their billionaire asscracks who screwed up their own nation and kept their own people down. The Democrat party is working for those castillian racist jerks! Or maybe they can't see two steps. One step, sure, they see it, but two steps seems to be an intellectual stretch for them.
The illegal aliens need to stay home and "clean up" their own crooked fatcats, whatever form that takes. I'd say look south of mexico for how that is working in some places. hint: it is working well.
The Democratic platform endorsing illegals that bankrupting local school districts and hospitals, and causing just a huge increase in local property taxes, and screwing over their own teenagers and college kids with entry loss of entry level jobs and forcing down wages, forcing born-here's to have two jobs to not quite make ends meet because of blue collar job pressure from the illegals, combined with the rise of prices for entry level housing are going to hurt them when they should be looking at a landslide dwarfing the 94 midterms. The "progressives" need to look at what one of their heroes cesar chavez said-illegals were the worst form of scabs he and his ag union movement had to face.
I'm an independent, I vote third party for the most part, and have no dog in this R vs D fight (other than wanting to see both those parties made illegal for generations of corruption), but just tactically speaking that is without a doubt the sheer dumbest stance on any major issue I have ever seen in politics, which covers some decades now.
We already had an illegal alien amnesty, it didn't work, just made things worse. We have laws for legal immigration-and no one is really against them! Legal -si! Illegals-go home and clean up your own "culture", you have the historical tools and guidelines how this is done. good luck.
Just enforce the laws on the books about the illegals and deport them, that is the only thing that will work. Start fining the employers the ten thousand dollars a head that is provided in the laws, that will get the message out. The Democrats just might snatch defeat from the jaws of victory over that issue come november. It's like, they can't even read independent polls or something.
The top three are the war, illegal immigration and the economy. They mostly fail it on the last two, (insane tax the middle class action, wanting to punish successful small businessmen with the death tax, which is an income tax on top of an income tax, etc, not even understanding that corporations NEVER pay taxes, customers and workers do, etc)(and I'll mention them classifying all gun owners as potential felons, etc, something that every election costs them millions of votes especially in the gun owning middle class suburbs while they push victim disarmamament) and when push comes to shove, people vote their wallets above everything else at the polls, something else you will notice if you watch long enough.
We haven't had a total collapse yet, and by hook or most likely crook they got gas prices back down before the election, so the economy deal will be around a netural to still a slight edge to the Rs, (just barely) By my card they are only ahead on one of the top three (kerry and hillary are the best they can do?? Laughable!), so we'll see what happens, diebold hacked or not, a wash on the next and behind on the third. It's not a slam dunk for them yet. And you can bet the the Rs have been sitting on some juicy D scandals that they will leak in the next couple of weeks to counter the recent R scandals.
And back to diebold...you don't see the top level D party making an issue of it, only the grassroots, and I don't wonder why at all-it's because they are mostly all susceptible to blackmail once they get past county level.
Exactly. In the 2004 Presidential election, exit poll numbers in key battleground states varied drastically from the actual results. That's extremely suspicious because people often have no reason to lie to unbiased pollsters about who they voted for. According to several statistical experts (who are far more knowledgeable about stats than the average Slashdot poster, and 7 out of 10 people would agree...) the discrepancies were statistically impossible. It was a big, red, flag that something was amiss in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and several other states. Read this statement from Kennedy's first article:
If you have a rational, scientific mind, that's about as conclusive as it gets. It's certainly enough to pique the interest of people like Robert F. Kennedy, who then ask questions like "Was the last election fixed?" and "Will the next one be?" So Kennedy digs around and does some good old-fashioned investigative reporting, he follows the money trail, and lo and behold it leads to disgraced Republican influence peddler Jack Abramoff and several sleazy advocacy groups!
I don't think it matters what party is complaining, there is a problem. Period. There has been for a very long time. If you've ever been involved in politics, you know dirty stuff goes on. You get stuff like employers putting the word out that you better vote for this candidate or lose your job. You get people giving alcohol to alcoholics to vote for the person of their choice. There are a whole host of other things, but this stuff really happens. Even today.
There is no doubt that politics are not all fair. Struggles for power never have been since the dawn of man. But shame on us willing to go to so much length to spend money to protect our democracy from outside threats while at the same time not taking similar efforts to protect it from within.
Do away with the entire concept of voting.
Let anyone that wants public office have it... Make the penalty for failure to do something useful for the common person, while in office, death.
Allow any person to enforce the penalty, if so inclined, without fear of repercussion in any way.
Problem solved.
Well we have here all the stuff that you propose. The ID is obligatory, and you have to use some kind of ink to avoid voting twice.
It didn't matter at all, in all the caribean region the paramilitars intimidated people to vote for Uribe, just like 4 years before.
A month ago the supposedly guerilla attacks in the possession of Uribe were revealed to be caused by the army, and I pressume Uribe knew about them. I hope the rest of the truth about Uribe will be made public soon enough.
Colombia is not better than the US and UK in the race to end all civil rights as soon as they can, while they last in power (which seems to be forever).
I am all for independently auditable election results, and for paper trails as an easy way to get there. I am against those who think we can get by without easy, robust recounts. Go back and read the comment to which I replied. It was about party affiliation, so I responded in counterpoint. (I also doubt that the Democrats figured out better ways to hack the system -- the problems in the primaries were mostly intra-party, and related more to whether the systems accepted votes than to how accurately they counted. Instead, I suspect that the Democrats wanted to keep the Diebold machines simply because a Republican governor wanted to shelve them this year.)
...of many, but just an example:
http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=4027
Oh, wait, sorry about believing what you want to believe, I forgot.
I actually hope a Republican DOESN'T win in 2008 so we can have a 4 year reprieve from the incessant bitching about people who thing Bush/Republicans stole the election(s). (I didn't vote for Bush.)
According to sources found on Google, the returns did indicate Truman won by the end of the night. However, the results varied by geography back then, as they do now. In the 1948 election, the Northeastern states (whose polls would close first) voted for Dewey; the South was off doing its own thing, and the West and Midwest swung the election in favor of Truman.
News services were slower back then, and there was a press strike aggravating the situation, forcing an early decision on the headline. So the Chicago Tribune went with the early results, and cringed as the rest of the returns poured in in favor of Truman.
[I also vaguely recall an issue with the way the public-opinion polls were run then (this might have been for an earlier election): Pollsters pulled their "random" samples from vehicle registration records, and at the time, not everyone had a car. So, predictions were skewed in favor of the candidate with the wealthier supporters (in 1948, Dewey).]
Isn't the idea of a secret or austrailian ballot outdated anyway? Big brother knows who you voted for, but does he retaliate?
If voters had a voter ID attached to their name with their votes, it would solve this whole mess... and the voting system would stop being in denial of the truth, that privacy is a thing of the past...
RFKJ is a weird, sick puke. If there is a point to be made, you could not find a worse spokesman on the face of God's green earth than this sick puke.
The next thing to remember is to put next things next.
You mean the same Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who warns about the perils of global warming between trips on his private jet?
And, since I failed to include it in the two posts above this one (see my second self-reply to grandparent), I certainly don't blame you.
Exit polls are designed to collect a lot of statistical data, true, but they aren't designed to determine who will/should win an election. They're designed to marry socio-economic data to voting behavior.
For obvious reasons, your income, marital status, race, etc. aren't collected (and shouldn't be collected) by the government when you vote. In order to get data on this, social scientists/statisticians do exit polling. This data can then be used to attempt to predict voting behavior among specific groups in society. It can't be used to effectively predict election outcomes.
It's the purpose that's different and that people - including myself in the first two posts - are looking over.
I say lad, you are really for that skunk? He's compromised, tainted, bad meat. This link only scratches the surface, he *barely* squeaked through. It's a distraction. The political tactic is called having a "controlled opposition", an old but still effective technique. Look elsewhere for honest paleo conservatives. He isn't one, he's a CFR globalist stooge.
you can make Free software just as good by requiring specific builds with authorizations keys and what not to install on voting machines, but I am under the impression that would violate the GPL v3. Thanks Richard Stallman!
GPL V3 does not keep people from checking the version of their packages. It's only a GPL violation if you keep the user from modifying or changing their own software.
Yes, anyone can analyze the official source code, but not one can see the source code that was compiled and installed on any given machine by a [random] technician.
That's what package checks, like those used by Debian, are good for. A state or county can set up a package repository and be sure that any qualified technician can get and install it without trouble. Indeed, the process is fool proof enough that the local election commission can do it themselves. This is much better than having a single company do everything, especially a company with a shady record like Dibold.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The right wing has given the government too much power? Hello, McFly. The left wing gave government the power, and the right is all too happy to use it. Maybe the left wing should have thought about the fact that they might not always be in power before expanding the power of the government so far.
Because there is no evidence.
Yes, there is. The US propaganda machinery (aka "the press") just won't tell you about it.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Warren Slocum, who is in charge of elections here in San Mateo county, is extremely critical of touch-screen voting machines. He liked the system we had here - big paper ballots marked with black markers, which the voter inserts into the scanner atop the ballot box. This gives a quick count when the polls close, and the ballots are locked in the box in case a recount is needed.
But we couldn't keep that system. It wasn't compliant with the "Help America Vote Act", which requires touch-screen machines for "accessability" by blind people. San Mateo had to go touch-screen, but it went with Hart InterCivic eSlate machines. They're still not high-security devices, but they're way better than the Diebold crap. Slocum pushed to get California to require printers for manual recounts on all California touch-screen machines, and that's now the law in California.
But Hart InterCivic has problems, too.
"Gail Fisher, manager of the county's Elections Division (for Travis, TX), theorizes that after selecting their straight party vote, some voters are going to the next page on the electronic ballot and pressing "enter," perhaps thinking they are pressing "cast ballot" or "next page." Since the Bush/ Cheney ticket is the first thing on the page, it is highlighted when the page comes up - and thus, pressing "enter" at that moment causes the Kerry/ Edwards vote to be changed to Bush/ Cheney."
Yes.
Regardless, he was popular through a lot of his two terms.
Granted I didn't like him. But I did not like him because he expanded the power of the executive branch greatly through executive orders, he bombed a couple of countries for no good reason, he displayed absolutely no respect for privacy with the Clipper chip initiative, and his staff was mired in conflict of interest, incompetence, and other questionable activities.
Imagine how I feel about Bush...
Finkployd
Look up "signing statements," "torture and habeas bill," "nsa spying," and "unprecedented wartime powers" and then say that again with a straight face.
None of the abuses of power under the current Republican adminstration were given to them by anyone, nor were they in place when Bush took office. Bush and his cronies have SEIZED this power, either by BREAKING THE LAW or by CHANGING IT.
Short of putting a silver bullet or a wooden stake in to Bush and Cheney themselves, there is nothing anyone could have done under the LAW that was not ALREADY IN PLACE to stop them.
For Christ's sake, this is one of the most frustrating arguments that people make. What, exactly, were the Democracts supposed to do before 1994 to ensure that no president ever waltzed into office like Bush and decided to WRITE HIS OWN LAWS AND DISREGARD CONGRESS ENTIRELY? Do you think they should have passed a bill that said:
"House bill X.Y.Z(A.B.C.)
This bill hereby forbids the President from writing his own laws and disregarding Congress entirely. If Congress says it, sorry old boy, you gotta do it, and if Congress forbids it, sorry old boy, you can't do it. The President is not entitled to end the rule of law just becuz he wants to. Period."
One would have hoped it was self-evident. And even if they had passed such a law, what would stop Bush from taking office, sitting down with his pen, and doing exactly what he did anyway?
"My Response to House bill X.Y.Z.(A.B.C.) by George W. Bush
I'm gonna do what I want anyway, neener neener neener, because I'm the decider! Just try to stop me!"
What were the Democrats supposed to do pre-1994 to prevent such a power grab?
And don't let's forget that torture was illegal, prisoners were guaranteed trials, spying required a warrant, and international law prevented pre-emptive wars before this administration. This is not stuff that the Democrats "gave" to the president. This is stuff he "took."
They're lawmakers. All they can do is fucking MAKE THE LAW. If Bush and Cheney decide that law is not cool, they're gonna rule the skool, how is that the fault of everyone before them that FOLLOWED the law? How the HELL are these things the fault of the pre-1994 Democrats, for Christ's sake?
why do you U.S. people insist on pushing the electronic voting idea.
Actually, who the hell's idea was is. Can anyone HONESTLY say the american people wanted and ASKED for the electronic voting?
How many centuries have you guys and everyone else on the planet been using paper ballots very successfully?
If the U.S. is anything like my country, the vast majority of people manning the voting station are senior citizens. No offence to the old folks but y'all aint too good with fancy electronic doodads.
We can only hope that all the ones doing the hacking are Democrats!!! I don't care if Hillary becomes president, as long as no one as DUMB as Bush gets re-elected!!!
----- I have bad karma for a reason! -----
Disclaimer: I am not an American. Do not vote in US elections, and never will.
This is (hopefully!) where the US system actually STARTS to work. (Given that it is currently *not* working) The USA has a very good system of checks and balances - currently these are NOT being used and are not working correctly, but it is inevitable (I say) that they will start to work soon-ish.
While it IS true that US non-voters are the most apathetic bunch of losers possible, it will happen that they actually DO become concerned, but only when things get bad for them personally. Within a few (3-5) years from now, the average US worker will start to realise that they are working 10 hours a week more than they used to, but that their standard of living is not improving. This will be entirely due to crazy monetary policy, political mismanagement, Military stupidity, and excessive foreign borrowing.
THIS is when the corruption will be rooted out of the US system, and I predict many thousands of people will go to jail. Not hundreds, but MANY thousands. It might take years for those responsible to be foundout and imprisoned. (And, if the US court system isn't fixed in the meantime, most of the indicted will die of old age before they get a court date.)
Until things actually get worse for average voters (or actually, average non-voters, because they outnumber average voters IIRC) there will be no "political will" to root out the offenders. Sure, the losers of elections will protest loudly, but unless they are supported by a strong electorate, and strong evidence (combined! One by itself just isn't good enough) then the situation will continue as now: The worst democracy money can buy.
The absolute mystery to me, is how the normally sane people of America, have permitted a voting system which does not have a paper component to be implemented. I believe it is all to do with the "housing bubble" which has put so much money into US pcokets that you've all been far too busy buying Hummers, Plasma TVs, Satelite dishes and going out for dinner, to actually see what's been happening to your country.
Pretty soon though, the housing bubble is gonna burst, and that Hummer will cost $300 to fill the tank, and the Plasma TV will suffer burn-in and the Satelite dish will have 27 arab-speaking channels, and 99 Chinese speaking channels, (All you'll be left with in English) is FOX and 195 channels of Sports) and the restaurants will be closed, or feeding you heart-attack food.
THEN and ONLY THEN - will the shit start to hit the fan.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
They were supposed to offer free cards to those who couldn't afford them, but failed to do so... I'd say that's more a failure of bureacracy than racism, as the NAACP claimed.
So what you're saying is that the US public doesn't get as upset over a leader who didn't reach that threshhold. He wasn't caught lying. He didn't royally fuck up everything. And the democrats continue to fail to provide anything useful.
I'm going to go with the path of least resistence here and say, "Because there's nothing to report."
This is quoted from None dare call it stolen:
There's a lot more interesting reading (at the least) at that link.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
george bush has connections in defcon
Bush 43 cannot claim much credit for this -- moving the tax burden up the scale is a trend that goes back as far as The Tax Foundation's charts show -- but he may be able to claim credit for increasing the bottom 50% earners' share of total Adjusted Gross Income, which had been steadily decreasing between 1980 and 2000. Surely doing that, while still reducing their tax burden, counts for something. (Judging from those AGI numbers, at least, overall income inequality has been DECREASING since 2000. Go figure.)
This is the perfect answer to the "paper voting can be tampered with anyway" point. The current political landscape is a testbed for unfounded moral equivalency. A lie about a blowjob is not the same as a lie about a war, and in the same vein, paper ballot box stuffing is not the same as electronic vote tampering. The latter has far more potential to improperly influence important elections and to undermine the democratic process than its paper counterpart ever did. If you believe at all in the ability of computer technology to make most other tasks simpler and easier, then you have to at least consider the possibility that fixing elections has just become simpler and easier with the advent of the Diebold machines.
"...favoured party..."
Sorry, but I have doubts that you are an American with that spelling
--Joey
Those figures are aggregate and misleading.
for example:
if the super rich gain 1% and the bottom 50% gain 1%.. the super rich gain much much more in real dollars.
As for the aggregate increases in tax revenue from the wealthy and the "decrease" from the middle class, how much did the middle class lose in government grants such as the shrinking student aid, the utter destruction of social security, the slashing of school budgets.. the list goes on and on.
what about the per capita income tax? the median wage? i'm not hearing youuu...
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The only thing that could be misleading in that sense are the 7% and 10% numbers I mentioned; but those are both relative to the group's prior numbers -- so the bottom 50% of earners had a significantly higher relative increase in AGI than the top 50% (or 1%) did. The shifting share of income tax paid, especially given the shift in AGI in the opposite direction, is not susceptible to that misunderstanding.
You are also moving goalposts. You posted about tax burdens, not total ROI from the government or other forms of economic health. I have better things to do than chase down numbers for you and explain why per capita income tax or median wage are at least as susceptible to manipulation or misunderstanding as fraction of total AGI and income tax paid (they certainly have less to do with tax burden than do the numbers I cited). Since you present no support for your tax burden argument, I interpret your post as an admission of error.
At the old 25 cents each rate, here's a dollar's worth:
Hope that helps.
--MarkusQ
P.S. Bonus clue: many of the people who are being accused of presiding over the present round of corruption were players at a lower level during the Nixon administration. Thus it doesn't have to be that "all politicians are always crooked" but might be the somewhat more limited "these particular crooks are still crooked". Note that they were selling the old "the President has as much athority as if he were king" snake oil back then, too.
What the fuck? This article is a dupe of an article posted in June:
/ 17/1845248
/ 01/1831256
0 1/1724225
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09
As was this one, a dupe of a story posted in 2003:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10
As is this one, a dupe of a story from last fucking year.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/
Interesting stuff? Maybe. News? Hell no, not if it's been posted before.
that allowing "private, partisan companies to secretly count and tabulate votes using their own proprietary software" is a bad idea? Is anyone really naive enough to believe in the 'honesty' and 'integrity' of corporate America?
What? A large American company Lie? Cheat? Steal? Nooo, not in this day and age!
Maybe all these companies are using the Jedi Mind Trick on the more feeble minded members of our government:
Diebold: "We don't need any official oversight."
Government: "You don't need any official oversight."
Diebold: "We can count the votes in our secret underground lair."
Government: "You can count the votes in your secret underground lair."
Once upon a time we could trust in our leaders. Once upon a time the levels of corruption were below the radar. Once upon a time can happen again when people pull their heads out of their asses, wake up and start acting like members of a democracy instead of cowed, overindulged, overentitled, ignorant 10 mpg driving automatons. All voices have merit, ultimately, and especially in balance. Until then wake up AC (gee, that says a lot right there) and take note of the fact that the country is under incredible tension. I imagine when some reduction in lunacy is achieved slashdot will recede back into the sublime waters of mostly things cool and tech.
Until then sweetheart you are free and encouraged to start your own tech only site, submit a plug to slashdot, and revel in purity.
Here's the facts that liberals just don't want to accept:
As much as I disagree with your particular viewpoint in general politics, I must commend your statement about all politicians being completely disconnected from the common man. :)
as in why do you use them? why is a machine so much better then a piece of paper, with a circle that you mark an X in?
it's simple, fool proof, easy to count, and very clear who was voted for (No dangling chads in Canada)
I suspect the arguement for voteing machines is that an instant tally is possible at the end.
The last 2 municiple elections in Ottawa still used the x in a circle method, but the balot was run face down through a scanner into the balot box. (sure, somone could have rigged the scanner, but i saw my vote go into the box, and im sure the scruteners would compare a few box counts to the machine count to verify accuracy.) and if technology fails, guess what, the voteing is still done the same way - you just have to count by hand.
you were talking in aggregate numbers..
the super rich in aggregate have comparable wealth to the entire lower 95% of the income spectrum.
the idea that the lower classes would gain more than the upper class who have less members and by your own figures a higher percentage income growth is ludicrous.
Finally.. I'm not shifting goal posts.. if they charge lower taxes and at the same time render fewer services then their real taxes (the real ratio of money spent to services received) has either not changed or even risen.
Since you present no support for your tax burden argument, I interpret your post as an admission of error.
yes.. no support = admission of error.... just like not speaking = admission of guilt.
very sound logic there.
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YOu want support?
.98
I recently gathered quarterly data from the US census beurau on median overdrafts from 1990 q1 to 2005 q4.
The model derived is telling.
The median overdrafts have been rising exponentially in fits and starts throughout that time perod. They were alleviated quite substantially by the 1993 clinton economic package, but continued rising from there.. the rise became more pronounced at the turn of 2000 and there wasn't even a dent put in it by the bush tax cuts.
by the way.. the R squared on that model was greater than
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"According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion.(40)"
The problem with this claim is that the one in three billion number is calculated by assuming that the exit poll was taken by a completely random sampling of voters. Of course, exit polls are not collected at every polling station, and we expect to see different results at different stations. Even if they were taken at every polling station, certain voters might be more willing to take an exit poll than others. Random sampling is well understood, and it is possible to remove uncertainties about the "randomness" of a sample, but exit polls are not conducted this way because of the time and difficulty involved (it would not be possible to collect enough data in one day). To account for this, pollsters normalize their exit poll results to the real election results and use the data to say which groups of people voted for with candidates.
So no, that is nowhere near conclusive.
My 'free state provided ID' cost me 20 bucks. Supposedly, it's good til I turn 65, 14 years from now. However, with the new requirement I have a Federal-approved ID, I get to spend $30, 40, maybe more in a year to get it.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
The proper punishment for treason against a country and its foundations, for everything that makes it anything of value, is death, in plain view, so that we can know the bastards are truely dead.
Those we revere for initiating violence to throw off a corrupt an cruel government had the names of Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Madison and Franklin (among others)
What names will be remembered 200 years from now when children read about the second revolutionary war?
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
as for point 1, exactly what is that supposed to connote? Every other industrialized nation we are allied with has a socialist structure, and we already have socialist structures. Roads are one of them. Are you calling people who advocate interstates dirty commie bastards? no!.. how about water? sewage treatment?.. what exactly is it that's so detestable about implementing some socialist policies? Would it not give rise to greater economic activity if people knew they could risk everything to start a business secure in the fact that if they should fail they will not end up some detestable wretch picking up aluminum cans for their "colleciton"?
as for point 2, this is an unsubstantiated assertion which does not even make sense! "protecting the carabou" does not require money or active effort at all.. you set aside their habitat and leave them the heck alone and that's it!
as for point 3, this is an assumption of guilt with the requirement that I somehow prove the innocence of these people.. I thought the US system of judgment was predicated on innocence until proven guilty. No matter what systems are in place there will always be leeches, but the majority of people participating are honest individuals. The current private system of healthcare results in a 30% dead weight loss of consumer dollars into administration of the many different insurance companie's filing systems which would not be there if medicine were socialized.. but wait.. leeches are only bad when theyre poor, not when theyre wealthy insurance companies.
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believe that the problem of accurate voting machines, while intractable, is not impossible.
I guess you didn't know, but those mean the same thing. Anyway, I don't object to voting machines, I just demand a paper record.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It's my favorite thing about this neoconservative movement. They trot out and polish off all the old standbys as heroes:
- Hey, Nixon was a popular hero!
- McCarthy was a courageous American standing up against a global conspiracy!
- The Vietnam War was the right thing to do!
- Iran-Contra shows realpolitik skill!
I can't wait for the following attractions that are no doubt coming from the new "More centrist than ever!" uber-right-wing:
- Segregation made customer service more efficient!
- Slavery was great for the GDP!
- Keeping women from voting and working meant a better domestic education for America's children!
- Hitler tried to rid the world of a serious social problem!
Yeah, break out that Nixon's a popular hero poster, I'll hang it right here next to my real honest to goodness injun scalp and smallpox-covered blanket.
Holy cow. You made some huge assumptions about what you think was assumed when the exit poll analysis was conducted. Members of The National Election Archive Project, the non-partisan watchdog group to whom the the one in 3 billion figure can be attributed, will be the first to tell you that every single factor you just described made its way into their analysis of the polling data. Yes, seriously.
If I were a ruder Slashdot poster, I would have responded with something like "Who the fuck are you? The woman who wrote the white paper on this graduated Cum Laude from the University of Utah with a master's in mathematics and has been analyzing poll data for 10 years..." and so on, but rather than resort to an ad hominem attack, I'll just assume that you replied without taking the time to check the sources that describe in vivid detail how the analysis was performed. Here is a link to the pdf that describes the process that was used. I know reading an 18 page document is not half as easy as just writing a paragraph where you just make random, uneducated guesses about what it contains, but you might want to give it a shot.
Everything mentioned above should happen everywhere. If discrepancies between exit polls and official counts cluster in certain areas, and if all the errors are in the same direction, it's time to worry.
A decent number here seem to think that yes, the election results will be inaccurate and this is how it's always been; yes, there will be deliberate attempts to meddle with the results but so what, this is how it's always been; statistics suck and are good for nothing, really; exit polls suck and are good for nothing, really; it's impossible really, to collect accurate datasets, etc. Makes me wonder if some of these posters are in tech-related jobs. Is their approach that security sucks and is good for nothing? That data integrity sucks and is good for nothing, why bother, and so on and so forth?
Bingo. It's the lack of a verifiable paper trail that's the strongest argument against the use of the Diebold machines. Discussions about how the machines can be compromised appeal to the geek in all of us, but also serve to confuse the issue (paper ballot boxes can be compromised too, just in far more low-tech and uninteresting ways).
Democrats and Republicans alike need to be specific enough in their opposition to the Diebold machines and say something like "It's not that we are against electronic voting. It is that electronic voting in its current form, using these machines that offer no way of substantiating and verifying votes, offer complications and uncertainty when they were supposed to offer simplicity." I'm no speech writer, just a lawyer, so that language needs to be de-stilted and made more readable, but you understand what I"m saying. The attack against Diebold has to be just against Diebold and just on this one issue. If we solve the verifiable paper trail problem, then all of the other Diebold-related issues (machine insecurity, Diebold company biases, etc.) fall by the wayside because at least we will finally have a way of checking for impropriety.
American or not, the point is still valid
By the way, sneakily troll modding my parent post down and modding yourself up rather than discussing the issue makes me think much less of you.
and I hope pee wee herman wins, that guy has had a rough go of it.
Plus it should drive the point home.
"Exit poll discrepancies are considered "one tail significant at the five percent level" if there is less than a
.). Of course, I could tell that she made this assumption without even reading the paper, because it is literally the only assumption you can make with the amount of data they have. She goes on to say:
5% chance of that amount or greater of discrepancy occurring due to the random chance of selecting
voters as they leave the polling location."
No, she clearly says that she assumed voters were selected at random (random chance of selecting. .
"When plotted by official vote count or by exit poll shares, we can see what patterns of exit poll
discrepancy are produced by
1. different partisan exit poll response rates (such as the hypothesized Kerry-to-Bush voter
response rate of 56% to 50% that was proposed by Mitofsky to explain the 2004 presidential
discrepancies),
2. vote miscounts, and
3. random sampling error.
There are other factors which influence exit poll discrepancies, not listed above. However, not enough
data has been released by exit pollsters to know whether or not these other factors would affect an
analyses of WPD (within precinct discrepancy) patterns plotted by official vote count or exit poll shares.
Common-sense tells us that such other factors will not significantly influence this analysis, but we do
not know."
Of course, she does not list those other factors, but I would argue they they are significant (of course I only have a degree in Chemical Engineering, so it's not like I know anything about statistical analysis).
But you assume that the methods of conducting the poll were the same across the board, as well.
Discrepancies in polling methods can occur in clusters for many reasons, often due to the fact that those doing the polling are unpaid volunteers.
A staffing shortage could lead to less data collected, a polling place could have run out of forms for polling, a polling place may not have been staffed at certain times of the day, volunteers who dressed in a way to make themselves more or less approachable to certain sets of voters (or a really tall/short volunteer, a really ugly one - such as myself... - one wearing a t-shirt from a particular campaign, etc.), or even volunteers who goofed off for a bit could've simply made up data to fill in holes (much less likely, of course).
It's not just the methodology of analysis - it's the methodology of collection that can gum things up as well.
Looking back at one group I was with, the 6'4" Chinese kid who could barely speak English and had a "full-frontal assault" style of asking people to fill out surveys ("you want fill out survey now please, thanks?") was probably not the best choice for a volunteer... but, hey, we all got the extra credit. Great guy, good sense of humor, but probably not the best one for that task.
You should elaborate that by state law, there must be a paper trail in Minnesota elections.
As a resident of NY State, I'm jealous.
I don't normally think of federal laws as good things - but in this one instance, I dare say requiring a paper trail would be a not-so-bad federal mandate.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
mod parent up
The right question should be: "What will happen if the next election is hacked AND discoverd?"
I am sure the answer will be "Nothing really". Elections are better organized in almost all African countries.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
These guys just got rid of Hebeas Corpus for god's sake. They just ripped apart our entire legal system!!!!.
It's been decaying for a while now. Remember, Kevin Mitnick was imprisoned for four years (1995-1999) without a trial, without opportunity of bail, and without even an official list of charges against him. (He finally got his trial in 1999.) If that isn't a violation of habeas corpus, I don't know what is.
Anyone who doubts that election fraud is going on in the US is either naive, stupid, or is simply willing to overlook it because they're confident that the cheating favours the candidate they support. And you'll note that it's mostly republicans overlooking the fraud (I'm not so deluded as to call them conservatives -- the republican party demonstrates the politics of fascism, not conservativism). Of course, the worst thing is when republicans try to claim that election fraud is okay because both parties do it. If you need any more evidence that they're comfortable with winning an election by fraud and thereby ruling the nation as tyrants, that's it.
Corruption is everwhere fat cats are used to paying, to get there own way so why should an election be any different.
Generally they know less than 50% of any country bother to vote, so they only have to get or fake aleast 25% of votes buy what ever means.
1) Get all the armed forces votes in as there pretty much guanrenteed to stick for the same.
2) Forget about any votes from ghettos where people from racial or ethnic background are united as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily.
3) Wait for election, should be a win/win situation.
4) If you have any problems throw large amounts of cash and heavy boy in the competions direction.
Elections are just like wars, nowadays.
Democracy only ever works for people who are willing to walk around with a stick up there arse, pretending there urban dream is not a nightmare.
Wow, that's one impressive bluescreen. And that's not Diebold, that's NCR. Yikes.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
After reading JFK Jr.'s article, I went to the CA state voter information web page to see whether my state had any plans on implementing electronic voting systems. I was a bit surprised and dismayed to find that 51.6% of Californians voted to "upgrade" our voting systems in the 2002 primary elections. What was even more surprising though was that in this primary election, a slim majority of the votes were Republican (roughly 51% vs. 47%), whereas in the 2002 general election a far greater majority of the votes were Democrat (about 48% vs. 42%). To be fair, the incumbent usually enjoys a swing of votes in his or her favor between the primary and general elections.
Another interesting item I found on the CA government web site was a letter to Diebold essentially certifying their voting systems for use in the 2006 elections with the condition that they fix the machines' security and reliability problems in the long term. The fact that the state would allow a system with known vulnerabilities to be used in this upcoming election has me worried.
It does have a strong smell of either astroturf or idiocy, possibly both.
But can't we do a bit of that ourselves? Can't we, who actually understand what the word "Meme" means, create a meme of our own, one so successful that it actually changes the world for the better?
Hell, some of us have done this already, for better or for worse, with concepts like AJAX, Extreme/Agile Programming, Google, and Slashdot itself. There's a movie coming out about a political comedian, played by Robin Williams, who runs for President and wins, so basically, John Stewart for President -- but he's too smart to run anyway.
So let's decide on a political, moral, philosophical, and sociological set of ideas, and construct a meme so powerful that by 2008, we will turn this country upside down. Who's with me?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
-1 Asshat
As in the Civil War? 150 years ago? Wow. I think most of us are talking about the more recent elections. I think voting reform is a great idea - and I don't really care who's "worse", if it's systemic then we need to fix it. Fancy machines won't fix other types of more common fraud, as the parent points out.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So why is it that exit polling used to be predictive within a known margin of error, but stopped being so in 2004 - and only in certain areas?
Stop the brainwash
What names will be remembered 200 years from now when children read about the second revolutionary war?
:(
I don't think it's going to happen.
My ex-wife thinks the Republicans win because they put winning as their highest goal, and did whatever it takes to win. So, lots of propaganda, careful setting of agenda, trading personal stances for party unity, and so on.
I think the Republicans win because people really do support the public ideals of the Republican party. (I don't believe the party actions match their ideals, but I also don't believe people really pay too much attention.)
Americans really do hate gays, and they really don't give a shit about the environment, and they would prefer to have a crushingly expensive medical system that omits a large fraction of the country, and they are perfectly happy with the government tapping their phones (because they have nothing to hide). They would choose different language to express their position, but that's the bottom line.
Hell, my own father told me that the outrageous treatment of José Padilla is okay, because "we're at war".
Personally, I moved away to a place that cares way more about freedom and the good of the people than the US seems to. I might move back to the US someday, but I don't really see a way out of the spiral of conflicted interest between the government, corporations, and powerful individuals that has locked the US into its current path.
Certainly the country can afford the paper and required equipment.
The only reason not to is to make it easier to rig elections.
Because you used phrases like "left biased" about the story (which was not left biased) and suggested that conservatives would get modded down. This might not necessarily be stupid, but then you didn't follow up and explain how corrupt elections fit into the whole "big government to save the gay whales" position versus the "big government to teach religion to its citizens" position.
If you are going to make this a left/right issue, then you have to explain it in terms of how corrupt elections relates differently to tax-raising promiscuous homosexual vegan marijuana-smoking bicycling-driving athiest/Wiccan communist hippies, than it does to deficit-spending monogamous capitalist carnivorous SUV-driving Christian soldiers.
"A fool and his money are soon elected."
- Will Rogers
*points a finger and laughs*
George "Poppy" H.W. Bush ("41") led the plumbers to assassinate John Fitsgerald Kennedy at Richard Nixon's order. Poppy was umbrellaman. Sitting next to Poppy in Dealy Plaza is Martinez, a plumber caught in the Watergate burglary. Army Intelligence's Alexander Haig was an active participant and was put in charge of JFK's funeral arrangements--without any prior experience. Poppy's ulterior motive was personal revenge against Kennedy. JFK and Barbara Pierce (before she became Barbara Bush) had a romance. "W" is even thought to be the result of Kennedy's romance with the future republican first lady. The unexpected pregnancy abruptly ended Barb Pierce's academic career. Bush was also upset that the Bay of Pigs invasion was not followed up by Kennedy, because Bush's family fortune (50+ millions) had been lost in Cuba in 1959. Finally, Bush, Nixon, Haig, Martinez, et al. were angry because of JFK's civil rights speech in the summer of '63. Poppy and JFK both worked in the small Office of Naval Intelligence early in World War II where he met Barb (Poppy's girlfriend at the time). Poppy stayed in intelligence & was CIA agent in charge of the Bay of Pigs & used his company goons. Those goons (Plumbers) used CIA resources (umbrella-gun, chemically enhanced suggestibility) to persuade Ruby, Nixon's old employee, to murder patsy Oswald. Similar tactics killed MLK, RFK, shot Wallace & Reagan and murdered hundreds of innocent witnesses. "W" got hold of the clear liquid his father and the Plumbers used in assassinations and used it to chemically seduce young girls. The girl would be forced to breath vapors from "W"'s brandy snifter filled with the CIA's intoxicant. The victim would lose memory of the attack. (The scientifically CIA developed mixture acted much like "roofies" plus a recent memory loss agent.) Thus the leaders of the republican party in America today are the worst serial killers and serial rapists the world has ever seen. They have used their concoction to change the minds of potential contributors as well as in a few cases to change the party affiliation of a few weak-minded Democratic congressmen and at least one US senator. Whitehouse republicans have been convicted of doing dirty tricks on Democratic election campaigns repeatedly, in the last election, too. Similar anti-democracy efforts to disqualify or intimidate voters are underway now. So could the republicans be seeking to rig the election? The answer is yes. Can we do anything about it? The answer is no, except be vigilent and pray to God that this evil plague amonst us will one day die out of its own accord.
I actually agree with this -- reality has a liberal bias. However, unlike Colbert's satirical response -- let me guess, avoid reality? -- I'd say it logically follows that since reality has a liberal bias, liberals are right, and neo-cons are biased.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Considering the "news" stories that were posted last election time about "liberal" candidates, I would rather vote Republican then elect one of those nuts to run things.
As a foreigner, I need enlightment: I see these Diebold stories show up regularly on /. and elsewhere, yet it seems that electronic voting spreads in the USA like a plague, ineluctably.
Is this electonic voting system planned to be used throughout the USA for the 2008 elections ? If so, what can US citizen (and the rest of the world) do, does some uproar happen ?
I see only comments, now we need action before it's too late; the hypothesis of USA stopping to be a democracy terrifies me.
I commented on this already. In order to get people to vote properly, or to convince congressmen to kill Diebold, or to get out in the street, you're going to need a meme, and a more powerful one than "You bring the pitchforks, I'll bring the torches."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
GNAA suspected in death of Rob Levin
Mad Virii (GNAP) Washington, DC - In a baffling move that sent shockwaves throughout the anuses of gay niggers everywhere, federal officials investigating the death of Freenode administrator and posterboy Rob Levin have recently announced clues that seem to assign blame towards the Gay Nigger Association of America.
An announcement of his death was transmitted as a Global Notice across the Freenode network, on September 17 at 06:18 JST:
06:18 -christel(i=christel@freenode/staff/gentoo.christe l)- [Global Notice] On the 12th September Rob Levin, known to many as Freenode's lilo, was hit by a car while riding his bike. He suffered head injuries and passed away in hospital on the 16th. For more information please visit #freenode-announce
"It seems that the bike was impacted by a large pink bus in the shape of a hypodermic phallus," an inside source stated. "Levin's carcass was penetrated anally by the hood ornament, and it took a team of coroners to remove the several gallons of what could only be described as seminal fluid from the victim." EMTs on the scene say Levin's body was covered with open sores.
The GNAA reaction was astonishing. "We have stuck alot of things up Rob Levin's ass in our time, but we maintain innocence," stated GNAA president timecop, fingers crossed."Even when driving a bus up some nigger's ass was fashionable, the GNAA never took part in it."
Later on at the Rob Levin's Death after-party, GNAA member madvirii exclaimed "OH LAWD IZ DAT SUM DEAD FREENODE ADMIN?" and there was liberal lolling.
About Freenode:
Leaderless.
About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.
Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a GAY NIGGER ?
If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member.
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing GAY NIGGER community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America and the World! You, too, can be a part of GNAA if you join today!
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Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today! Upon submitting your application, you will be required to submit links to your successful First Post, and you will be tested on your knowledge of GAYNIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE.
If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is NiggerNET, and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as our official server. Follow this link if you are using an i
Pure comedy, man....
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
This is simply ridiculous. Cryptologist David Chaum, for example, has created a couple of systems which use encoded receipts which allow the voter to later check that his vote was recorded properly (say by going online), but don't allow him to prove to a third party how he voted, thus satisfying voting regulations geared toward preventing vote selling (for those anti-free-market types, who don't believe you should be able to sell your vote).
These systems employ random processes, using seeds like the final closing price of the stock market, to select a set of random ballots from the pre-talley group for "decryption" by linking them to the final talley group. It can be statistically shown that just auditing a small number of the votes this way can make an undetected ballot forgery extremely likely to be detected. More than a few fraud votes become virtually impossible to go undetected.
The systems work, even if every off-the-shelf computer used as a voting machine (they can be put to use in schools and such during the interrims between elections) is running malicious code, instead of the proper open source code it's supposed to be running.
Why are we not using these types of systems?!
I AM PULLING MY HAIR OUT RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I DON'T FUCKING KNOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!
http://punchscan.org/
dpilot, you should know by now that this sacred concept is known as "truthiness". You are officially on notice.
I'm not saying which was a better president (it's obvious that Clinton was, if nothing else, a much better Replublican), or even which was more inspiring (frankly I, and people I know who interacted with them on a professional basis, find neither inspiring). I'm just confused as to how your post got moderated up so highly when it is based on completely incorrect information. Yes, I know there were third party candidate factors, but I seem to remember Perot mostly stealing votes from Bush who would have easily beaten Clinton for a second term.
I think it'd be wonderful to see the Democrats put up a candidate like JFK, though I wonder if the rose-tinted glasses we view him through are mostly due to his assasination in the line of duty?
There is nothing that can be done to stop electronic voting fraud in the US, in time for the next elections.
The only way to stop the fraud is to make it blatant when you compare it with exit polls.
And the difference cannot be just 5%, this can allways be explained away.
You need to have less than 20% of voters for Republican.
And yes it is possible, for instance in germany the Nationalistic Party that though that being german was equivalent to being right got 33% in 1930, 43% in 1943 and 1.6% in 2005.
US citizens have to understand that being member of the Republican party is not an acceptable option.
If you DO want to vote conservative vote Democrat they are reactionnary enough.
GPL V3 does not keep people from checking the version of their packages. It's only a GPL violation if you keep the user from modifying or changing their own software.
No, the GP wanted to know if it was OK for FLOSS to check with the voting machine (or the other way round) whether it was authorised using private keys . My understanding of this is that the GPLv3 would disallow this.
That's what package checks, like those used by Debian, are good for. A state or county can set up a package repository and be sure that any qualified technician can get and install it without trouble.
That makes no sense. That doesn't ensure that the packages are the correct, authorised versions, just that the correct, authorised version is version x.y.z. It wouldn't do jack shit to make sure that the voting machines were running the correct, unmodified software.
(Note: I am no fan of Diebold in the slightest, either.)
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Ironic that a Kennedy wrote this article.
He's just pissed because it's so much harder to get the dead to vote (cf. the 1960 election of JFK).
-Styopa
If you're going back to 1860 to find an exception, then the exception pretty much proves the rule. In general, neither party has complained about elections being stolen. What's changed?
Well, one thing, of course, is the rise of the "new media" (i.e., bloggers) who mention things that wouldn't be covered by mainstream media - for better or worse.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"(Hint: Republicans won.)" Oh wink wink nudge nudge. Ye of short memory. Al Gore tried to steal the election in Florida. Remember the dangling and dimpled chads? When President Bush thought he lost, he congratulated his opponent, when Al thought he lost, he called out his attorneys. So their camp screamed "Election Reform"! Now we have electronic voting machines, like they were never going to be hackable. Thanks Al. The only excess CO2 is coming from his mouth.
Regardless of your political affiliation, the current Diebold fiasco should have you worried. There doesn't seem to be much concern from the current administration or their supporters, primarily because Diebold has Republican leanings. But consider the future...consider Democrats tampering with the machines as well...
It seems like every week there's a new story about Diebold's insecurities... A simple program on a SD card that can alter results, maintenance panels locked so securely that only a hotel minibar key can open them, unauthorized and undocumented patches being applied right before elections... I'm constantly amazed that anyone would consider using one of these machines.
It almost seems like the only way we'll get anyone to take this seriously is if there's a smoking gun. If somebody hacks the machines and Big Bird gets elected to office maybe then we'll see something happen.
MOD PARENT UP.
And, yes, if you keep talking like that, you can cause changes.
Everybody wants to talk about how close the election was in Florida and how it could have gone either way. That much is true. However if Al Gore would have won his own state (the great state of Tenessee) Florida would have not even been in play. The Gore Camp decided early on either that Tennessee would vote for it's own favorite son or that Tennessee was a loss and not to campaign here as much. George W was in Tennessee as many as three times in the final 6 weeks of the campaign, how many times for Gore you ask? Once. To vote for himself in his home district (which by the way, he did not even win).
JS
"if" the next election will be hacked .......
...
now THIS is a good joke to start the day with !!!!
Maaaaaan. Consider it ALREADY hacked. Probably they have started to make preparations to avoid the mistakes they did that caused them to be exposed the first time
Read radical news here
Um, Clinton failed to garner more than 50% of the popular vote in EITHER election.
49.24% in 1996 and 43.01% in 1992.
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2004/appendix.xls
Government IS the problem.
You were the one who introduced aggregates by saying that the tax burden shifted from the upper class or ultra-rich to the middle class. Aggregate numbers are the only way to interpret that statement: no one really cares what share of taxes Bill Gates pays as compared to Larry the trash guy, since those numbers are not representative of other people. (Also, wealth is not directly taxed, so introducing it is either a red herring or a pathetic indication that you are yet another liberal droid out of his depth.)
I pointed out the 7% and 10% growth numbers because they indicate reduced income inequality. The 10% income growth was for the poor, not the rich. If you think liberal should reject income inequality as a rallying point, I won't argue. Otherwise, your argument does not make sense.
You deny that you are moving goalposts, but what you claim is "tax burden" is called by other names by everyone else, since the standard definition of "tax burden" is strictly taxes paid. Clarifying your position by redefining terms is either moving goalposts or being sloppy.
Your claim about value received is wrong, to boot: the largest single-program increases in the federal budget under Bush have been for things like Medicare Plan D, which are used by (and benefit) the poor much more than the rich. Going forward, the CBO predicts that redistributionary effect will only increase.
Seriously - how hard is it to create something that's sufficiently secure and tamper-proof?
Of course, there may be a need for custom hardware - but it should be possible to create the software using OSS!
The requirements are IIRC:
1. tamper-proof - no open back-doors.
2. usability - grandma must understand how to use it
3. verifiable - a recount must be possible
I envision something like
A - Client computers inside the voting cabinets, running a touch-screen system and a printer writing ballots that contains both human-readable names and barcodes.
B - These clients are connected to a set of redundant databases that register the votes, and once the vote is registered they send a command to the originating client to print the ballot.
C - The voter sticks their paper ballot into the locked box. When voting ends, one of the database servers tallies up the vote, encrypts and transmits the results to the central server.
Since the boxes are not required to be opened for tallying when the polling is over, then nobody at the polling station would require the keys.
As easy as ABC!
And if some VC person is reading this, get in touch or steal my idea. I don't care as long as there will an open-sourced system that we can pressure our governments into implementing..
Stop the brainwash
I lie to exit polls.
I hate the way the major news organizations try to make their polls the news so I do my part to make sure they are wrong.
But why is the rum gone?
They got rid of Habeas Corpus ONLY for aliens. Lincoln and Grant got rid of habeas corpus for US citizens and yet we survived it.
m p/~c1091oWBrq:e116721:
S.3930 Military Commissions Act of 2006 (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:3:./te
(a) In General- Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking both the subsection (e) added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742) and the subsection (e) added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477) and inserting the following new subsection (e):
`(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
`(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.'.
(b) Effective Date- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply to all cases, without exception, pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act which relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of detention of an alien detained by the United States since September 11, 2001.
Government IS the problem.
Rigging elections has been the standard for a very long time, decades AT LEAST.
Of course, we really were never supposed to vote for president anyways - that's a privilege our state governments give to us, and it wasn't until a good 50 or 60 years after the constitution was adopted that most states were doing it. The results really haven't worked out very well, constrast the quality of the first dozen presidents against that of the last dozen. The office of the president these days seems to attract only the worse our country has to offer, regardless of vote rigging.
Government IS the problem.
Seriously.
"Home of the Brave, Land of the Free". There's a causal relation between these two. Brave people are not afraid to stand up to their elected Government when it fails to represent those who elected it. That's how you get your freedom - you fight for it. You defeated the British. Now you gotta fight again. Shake that fear and march. Day and night until you've fixed your Democracy. Get outa your couch and get those banners flying!
Stop the brainwash
20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The USA
/03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html
/pfindex
by Angry Girl of Nightweed.com
Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html
8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes. http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates
Give up, conservatism has now been discredited by history, like communism. All that's left is to pick up the pieces and try to move on.
I'm not here to Clinton bash, but if you will check out the percentages of the 1992 election you will find that Clinton got 43% of the popular vote.
I'm fully aware, but you make the assumption that Perot took all votes away from Bush (and Dole), when I believe it would have been more evenly distributed than, say, the votes Nader took from Gore. Regardless, Clinton was popular through much of his two terms, significantly moreso than Bush (excepting Bush's post 9/11 rating which he quickly squandered). I'm not a Clinton fan by any means, but even I will concede that, at least when he spoke, he usually commanded respect and appeared presidental (I feel the same way about Regan). Bush inspires nobody, even the most stalwart Bush supporters I know often cringe when he speaks.
I think it'd be wonderful to see the Democrats put up a candidate like JFK, though I wonder if the rose-tinted glasses we view him through are mostly due to his assasination in the line of duty?
I'm sure that is a large part of it, but it is still undeniable that he inspired people and motivated many (especially young people) to get involved and active in politics. He also gave off a very positive "vibe" as it were, contrast to Bush's doom and gloom, "we are all gonna die" attitude. Frankly I would be happy if EITHER party would put up a positive candidate, or at least one who's platform was not essentially "vote for me becasue my opponant will destroy us all".
Let's face it, the president does not do a whole lot. Every president has an army of handlers, policy people, speech writers, etc. doing the real work while their primary job is to be the "face" of government home and abroad. What those policies are depends on the party, so really all the President does is communicate. By that standard Bush mostly sucks, and Clinton mostly rocked. There have been exceptions (Bush's scripted or not speech at the WTC and Clinton's hamfisted addresses to the nation regarding his libido issues), but for the most part it is obvious who was the better communicator.
Finkployd
I will ask the same for this clown Foley. He can get hit by a bus for all I care.
Before you do the grammar-nazi thing, you should look the word up yourself.
/ntræktbl/
intractable
-adjective
1. not easily controlled or directed; not docile or manageable; stubborn; obstinate: an intractable disposition.
2. (of things) hard to shape or work with: an intractable metal.
3. hard to treat, relieve, or cure: the intractable pain in his leg.
-noun
4. an intractable person.
In the context of computer science it means "computationally difficult", sometimes to the point where it is not feasible to solve with a computer-- but not impossible.
funny, my grandparents live in Coral Springs, right off Royal Palm Blvd. They are Jewish. Guess who they voted for?
Judging by the disposition of Slashdot regulars, it appears that the overwhelming majority of hackers are left of center. IT people are notoriously liberal. Google invites George Soros and Al Gore to their corporate campus.
Yet the fear is that voting machine hackers will do the Republican's bidding.
Let me ask this question: How many Slashdotter's who are against voting machines and who are for going back to paper ballots also are against voters showing ID?
Yeah, sounds like that's some pretty shoddy reporting there.
Dipshit.
In your gut you can feel it, something is wrong. And in that dreamlike mind of yours you wish the good of the people would rise up to fix it. Yet you know in the end, no one will care enough to fix it, and we will passively let those who pull the wool over our heads to do it again and again and again. Until the end my friends.
Here's another question with respect to "what's changed" - for those who think the exit poll techniques are flawed, what's changed there that made them so flawed in '04, but not in prior elections?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
A program or machine isn't hacked if it does exactly what it is designed and implemented to do. The these machines have been designed and implemented to cheat. There's no hacking involved.
If spelling was any indicator of American citizenship, then 99% of the Americans on the internet would be under doubt. ;)
But in all seriousness, he could also be a naturalized citizen, originally from England, Canada or whatever, which would not make him any less American.
figuring out why the press said nothing about these incidents might be a better use of time than arguing about whether democrates or republicans are more responsible. They are, after all, an important check in the democratic system that seems to be FUBAR.
I agree wholeheartedly, but still hope things will work themselves out short of violence. Like many people, I have a family to protect and plan for, both their means of living and the things that make it worth living for. I am a moderate myself, and, in today's climate, that makes me a radical. Politics tends to swing like a pendulum: often it takes the leadership going to an extreme before the moderates start to wake up and drag things back to the center, but they tend to overreact and the situation drags the other way for the next generation to clean up.
[I live nearby; if you want to meet at some point, email me.]
They did in 1996 and 2000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_state_vs._blue_st ate_divide
> The tally in Georgia that November surprised even the most seasoned political observers.
You are talking to the wrong people if they were supprised at history repeating itself in 2004.
Let's not forget the many stories of dead people voting for Kerry.
Just make the war president a president for life, and be done with it already.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'd love to see every single voting ballot in the next election read, as a write-in, Frank Zappa. That would totally prove that the system is screwed.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
is what many Americans seem to forget. Elections come around more often than once every four years. Presidential elections are once every four years, but mid-term elections are held between those, and most localities (if not all) actually have general elections EVERY YEAR. In addition, there are primary elections, so if he covered all of these, there were probably 60+ elections (including run-offs) he covered in that 20 year span, so his error rate would be less than 2%.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Will the Next Election Be Hacked?
Yes, you silly wanker.
I know you were just being flippant, but throwing darts at a map, would tend to give more weight to rural areas, and hence would tend to favor Republicans.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
All of these comments about only the most recent elections being suspect are bullshit. This has happened time and again. The difference is, the media is more likely to pay them attention when the election is so close. Democrats have also had their share of voting irregularities. Remember the the groups of homeless people bribed to vote with cartons of cigarettes? The countless examples of dead people voting? While I won't negate the merits of the problems noted for Diebold systems, the picture being painted is that Republicans stole the election with these machines. Be objective, people, Robert Kennedy Jr. is hardly an unbiased source.
AND THE WORDS OF TWITTER SHALL BE OBEYED, OR...um...he'll...um...tell me to fuck off again...um...with his clearly debunked lies and inventions.
I'm fucking shitting myself, twitter. What're you gonna do, call me a troll? Oooh. Scary.
(Not to mention I didn't even insult you or anything in the grandparent. Is it because I completely demolished your pisspoor arguments? Or just because you're you?)
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Does anyone else find it odd that Robert Kennedy, a democrat, with a democrat opinion show on Air America keeps writing articles about how the 00' and 04' elections were rigged. Would Robert be protesting if Democrats had won?
/. has turned into moveon.org, thanks... News for liberal ners, stuff that matters...
I'm glad
Will all the comments posted be virtual dupes from the previous dupe article?
Will it really make any difference to the editors/posters on this site whether the next election is actually hacked or not? (Will the same people debate the same moot points endlessly regardless?)
Me, I'm just hoping to win the next Lottery they run for the good proles of Air Strip One.
There is only one thing dumber than the belief that Iraq is now a democracy and that is that the US is also a democracy.
Very insightful. Both Political parties are the parties of big government, it doesn't really matter who is in power as the citizens get screwed regardless.
CNN is right wing. NPR and BBC are neutral-to-slightly left. Fox is batshit insane. Right wingers have gotten so used to living in an echo chamber of conservative agreement that what used to be considered normal discourse they now consider to be insanity. Anyone advgocating social responsibility is called a communist. Nut jobs like Anne Coulter make outrageous statements that, while not believed or accepted at first, continue to shift the center of acceptable discourse further and further to the right. When anyone from the left tries to counteract this trend, we are told that WE are the ones shifting to the left, when we are just trying to bring things back where they were.
Conservatives have no real arguments, and when this is pointed out to them all they can do is whine about how no one listens to them and we are all just a bunch of insane ditto-heads. Conservatives have forgotten how to even have a dialogue about the issues, you are now either with them or you are completely nuts and not worth listening too. Fortunately, not all conservatives are like this, it's mostly the neo-cons. As a hard core leftist, I never thought I would be grateful to hear what conservatives have to say, but when I hear an actual old-school conservative talking these days, I am so fucking relieved to hear rational thought coming out of their mouths that I could listen for hours. Smaller government, fiscal responsibility, states rights? Sounds damn good to me! No abortions, no gay marriage, borrow and spend, adventures in empire, say what? That's not conservativism, stop fucking calling it that, find a new name for yourselves. How about the "BOHICA party?" That's Bend Over, Here It Comes Again, in case you didn't know.
Your criticism of the left is especially ironic, considering that the left has always been known for rational discourse and argumentation. That's one reason we leftists have been losing, we consider all sides. Neo-cons know how to circle the wagons and present a united front. Neo-con forums are completely intolerant of dissent. Most of what passes for discourse in neo-con circles would be considered the lowest form of trolling. I will admit that there are some loopy thinkers on the left, too, but no one even comes close to the level of insanity of that drug addled transsexual, Anne Coulter.
Democrats see Republicans as the ones selling out the moral foundation of our country while praising some fictitious version of it out of the other side of their mouths. We see you refusing to be held accountable to world-wide notions of justice, fairness, and decency. We see you raising straw man issues like illegal immigrants (who can't fucking well vote, by the way, or receive any kind of federal services aside from emergency room care.) We see you enshrining the interests of international corporations that hold no loyalty to our country over the interests of the small business person who is the real backbone of our national economy.
Your ideas are bankrupt and rooted in a deep seated inability to look at the real world. Your attempts at discourse are arrogant and insulting. Your ideas of fairness, decency, and morals would disgust a rabid hyena. You and people like you are destroying the greatest country on earth. You should all be tried as traitors.
How do you like it, when we talk like you do? I hear that shit from the right all the time. I'd love a rational dialogue, but we on the left have been trying for years and getting our asses handed to us because we try to play fair while people like you use language like I've used in the paragraph above. I, for one, am tired of it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Dude, I am a former Republican here, and even I know that
a) the whole homosexual marriage thing was purely and utterly manufacturered as a "wedge issue" to excite the voters
b) when the election was won, the issue went away, and lo, it has not been discussed since then
Christians are SO FRIGGING STUPID to fall for this. They are like ANTs. (Note, I consider myself a Christian too, I am not bashing.) It's like, the Bushandlers have a pool going to see what they can make people fall for.
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
Just a few points I wanted to clear up here. I helped out at the local precinct during the California primaries a few months ago. I helped set up and break down all of the machines. So let's talk about the lack of paper trails shall we? The touch screen systems seem to be what every one is worried about so well start there. When they are set up the current memory is printed out. All the people at the precinct look over the print out and verify that all of the tallies are currently zero. Therefore, at the start of Election Day: No tampering can have been previously committed. When you actually vote on a machine the results are printed to make sure that the values have been stored correctly. This is your first paper record of how the votes went. When the day is done we print out a finally tally of the votes which is again signed by all of the people working the precinct. One copy is hung on the door of the poling place and another is sent with the machine. Two people are required to transport all of the ballots to the main office. Yes there are holes in the system. If all the people working a poling place conspire it would be easy to fix those particular results. It would even be relatively easy for the two people transporting the results to forge other people's signatures and provide totals. In either case you still have the print outs from each persons vote that the voter verified was correct. Therefore you still have a verifiable paper trail if someone disputes the votes. I don't know why it isn't made more public, or perhaps our precinct just had special voting machines, but that is my personal axperience with the electronic voting.
For those of you who still don't believe...
From Princeton University's Center of Information Technology Policy:
This many absentee ballots would do a few things:
The main question will be: Who is the voter?
Haha, good point, and that is true.
And like the other poster said, I agree with the sentiment regardless of nationality.
--Joey
Lincoln and Grant got rid of habeas corpus for US citizens and yet we survived it.
So. . . Habeus Corpus is coming back?
When?
When we win the War on Terror?
When is that going to happen?
Please. . . tell me exactly when the WoT is over. What's the victory condition? hm?
When we're safe, we can have our Liberty back?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
RTFA
Exit polls were pioneered by Mitsofsky (spelling?) in 1967.
Truman was in the 1940s
Computationally difficult/impractical may as well be impossible - solving the travelling salesman for n=1000 is intractable, so it can't be done. Using the same sort of meaning, intractable voting problems require a different approach - if pure electronic voting is intractable, then it's impossible.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Bush this, Bush that. Waah, waah, waah, cry, cry, cry.
Nobody blinks at the abuses going on today because the federal government has been out of control for 60 years. Ever since FDR and his New Deal, the powers of the federal government have been expanding at a disgusting rate. Some of it has been good, some of it has been bad. But it all expanded federal power and numbed Americans to the fact that the government was too big for it's own britches, and some day we'd pay for all those times people uttered the phrase "There oughta be a law."
Let's face it, America is getting exactly what it deserves under Bush for our decades of apathy, and often desire that the goverment grow in scope.
People will often do whatever they feel it takes to "Win", especially in America.
On top of that, the current mindset of the incumbents is that it will be the end of the country if the Dems win.
The Dems feel the same way.
Pretty much if either side doesn't do their best to cheat, they will be betraying their country (from their POV).
Because these circumstances aren't unique (or, I'm afraid, even rare), it's up to us to ensure that voting is as cheat-proof as possible.
The fact that there aren't currently riots in regards to these Diabold machines is really embarrassing. Honestly I think the ink on the finger system might be more reliable.
I'm sorry, when did we start on the topic of the justice system or the health care system? The original point I was disputing was the practice of handing a check to someone to 'help feed them.' This has nothing to do with the justice system or healthcare (except they need food to stay alive ;) ). Back to the topic at hand: in many cases, these people are not able to feed themselves because they spend the money they do have on the non-essentials of life (like additictions to alcohol and/or drugs). Handing them a check to go buy food for themselves is many times just going to fund their addiction(s), as many people would rather have a crack rock then a good meal.
Bottom line: I, as a tax-paying American, would much rather my tax dollars go to giving food to the poor than handing them a check and expecting them to go buy food instead of another fix.
They left out one word from the summary blurb.
It's not "Will the next election be hacked?"
Its "How Will the next election be hacked?"
From registered corpses, to voting non-citizens, and from compromised locations to voter intimidation each and every election has had it's share of "hacking." You can bet that every part of the system involved in accounting for the votes of the electorate will be assaulted by members of all political affiliations in an attempt to gain unfair advantage. The controversies will be even more intense each election we have. If things continue as they are the faith in the system we have will reach a crisis point and every close election will be perpetually in dispute.
So the question remains not "Will it" but "How" and "where" and most importantly, "how can we stop it?" Surely not by creating insecure electronic voting boxes, is the most immediate answer, but that still leaves the same vulnerabilities and flaws that we have always had in the system.
Anyone got any good ideas on how to remove the human element from an entirely human process? I'm fresh out.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Did the KKK ever go away? Grant's suspension was targetted at the KKK. Is the KKK gone? Did we get our H.C. back? What's the victory condition in regards to the KKK? Oh wait, never mind...
And, if you were paying attention, the suspension of H.C. is ONLY in regards to ALIENS who are ENEMY COMBATANTS. So unless your an alien, your H.C. isn't going anywhere. And even if you are, unless your an enemy combatant, it still isn't going anywhere. The situation, while certainly disagreeable, isn't anywhere near as dire as some people are making it out to be.
Fight, yes, good, good, but, as Mark Twain said: "Get your facts straight first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." You haven't yet gotten the facts straight...
Government IS the problem.
Still, the part about Clinton stands.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Honest elections should NOT be a political issue. It should be a PATRIOTIC issue.
Screw both politics and patriotism. There's a PRACTICAL reason why elections should be clearly seen as honest.
Elections are, at essence, a mock civil war. While expensive, tedious, annoying, disruptive, and a daft way to run a government, they have the advantage of being better in each of those respects than real wars, and less destructive of resources to boot. (This is why it's ultima ratio regnum — war is worse than any other means of settling differences... except sometimes for finality) Thus, one prospective partisan, one vote, and God picks the side of the biggest battalions. Simple, and if you don't like the result, you can wait a bit until the next round.
Vote tampering alters the results of the mock war, but unlike speechmaking (propoganda) or even outright vote buying (hiring mercenaries), it would have not effect on an actual war.
If enough of the population rejects the results of the election's mock civil war, either as anathema or as bogus, they'll try a REAL civil war to see if that works any better.
Vote tampering ought to be a capital offense on par with War Crimes.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The opposition was more concerned that there wouldn't be enough time to switch over before the election. And, the move was interpreted by the Dems as a backhanded way to suppress turnout, especially considering his earlier stands on absentee and early voting. Personally, I've hugely in favor of a paper trail and the Maryland Dems have an inexplicable level of confidence in Diebold.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The Czech Republic is a great country and Prague a fantastic city. You are going to love it, especially if you like beer. Also worth brushing up on your Kafka before going.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
No, Bush is in office because Karl Rove is a genius when it comes to understanding public sentiments and how to manipulate public opinion. He knows our citizens are apathetic, uneducated about our own political system, short of memory, and obsessed with scandals. Anyone who follows politics with a critical and open mind can see what a disaster Bush is as a president. But, all is takes is a cartoonish and negative representation of your opponents, bogus scandals leaked through whisper campaigns( Swiftboats, McCain's "black" baby), a convenient and inexplicable drop in gas prices (BTW predicted by many analysts as a potential pre-election ploy), Goebel-esque criticisms of the anti-war movement, misrepresentations of facts and outright lies, incredulous spin just acceptable enough to placate your base, and a bullshit cowboy image for a man from Connecticut. They claim to hate Hollywood, but they're created the perfect fantasy world for their administration and the majority of us have bought it. You don't know the direction the Democratics want to move in because you haven't been listening to Democrats. You've been listening to the O'Reillys, Limbaughs and Savages of the world tell you that.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Ah, I see. I'm not sure how well-known Svejk is in the USA, therefore I was wondering how/why you selected this particular username. :)
;D
;)
Thank you for your effort to add a number of links and suggestions, they are certainly appreciated.
Two days ago I stumbled upon: http://svejkcentral.com/
This site also provides (links to) all kinds of material, you might like it.
I've indeed heard and read many positive stories about Prague and I'm really, really looking forward to my journey.
And the beer, yes the `pivo'!
(Yes, I've been learning the language a bit; it's my experience that knowing even a bit of a foreign language can enormously improve the experience. And no, no, no.. not just words for things like beer haha!
Thanks again!
this cartoon was in the local (NZ) paper last week
I discovered Svejk in college. I was waiting for a bus and asked a bookseller to recomend something. He asked me what my favorite book was and when I said Catch 22 he pulled out The Red Commisar changing my life in the process.
Regarding the links, prosím! And de'kuji vam for the link. I agree a little lingual effort goes a long way. especially in the Czech Republic where people tend to be both friendly and mannerly. Of course, I haven't been there in years, and Prague is a much busier and richer city now.
That site is by Zenny Sadlon, the gentleman who retranslated Svejk. I appreciate you linking it because I have not been there in years and it is much expanded. I do think he still has room for improvement in documenting Svejking and other resistance against the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968. The Czechs' and Slovak's humor and dogged devotion to freedom were remarkable. Czech patriots formed human chains, successfully blocking the Soviet advance in Bohemia. Mysterious technical failures prevented radio jamming equipment from reaching Prague by train, allowing the resistance to keep broadcasting. In Bratislava, locals disseminated pornography to the tank crews, then when the commanders ordered the soldiers back in their tanks, covered their periscopes. Also in Bratislava, locals cut off the water supply to Soviet troops, forcing them to fly it in from Hungary by helicopter. Later they spread rumors that the water supply had been poisoned by counter-revolutionaries convincing many Soviet troops to drink from the polluted Danube. In Roznava, Hungarian troops were assaulted by the ethnic Hungarian locals, who refused to be occupied. After negotiations with the Hungarian commander, the mayor agreed to allow the troops to sleep in an abandoned school and eat local food. However they had to obey a strict curfew. At sunset every evening the mayor would lock the soldiers in the school, returning in the morning to let them out. The Czech army supplied the resistance with mobile radio transmitters. People painted Swastikas on tanks stopped at traffic lights. They moved all the street signs around to confuse the invaders. Scores of villages renamed themselves Dubcek or Svoboda. The government continued to meet, often coordinating via pirate radio broadcasts. The Czech Communist Party denounced the invasion and encouraged resistance. It wasn't until April of 1969 that Dubcek was actually ousted, largely by economic pressure. Svoboda remained president until 1975!
Under Dubcek and Svoboda's leadership the Czech people mounted almost bloodless nonviolent resistance which proved far more effective than the Hungarian's paramilitary response to he 1956 invasion. In Hungary, the Nagy government lasted no more than three weeks after Soviet intervention, and the various anarchist communes and syndics were gone in another month. And although they managed to kill ~7000 Soviet troops in the process, 50,000-200,000 Hungarians died for a lost cause. While Dubcek and Svoboda lived out their days in peace, Nagy was executed.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
You don't know the direction the Democratics want to move in because you haven't been listening to Democrats. You've been listening to the O'Reillys, Limbaughs and Savages of the world tell you that.
Wow, that was helpful, thank you. What do I want for dinner tonight and where is my little baggie with my guitar picks in it? I'm hoping you can help me with this as you obviously have me well staked out.
Back you reality, where remain are completely ignorant and clueless regarding my media habits, Rove's tactics (while despicable) are pretty commonplace among both parties. I'm sure the timing of Foley story was just coincidental right? Despite Rove's tactics, Bush should have been easy to beat. Despite the voting fraud which likely occured on both sides (although with electronic voting it most certainly shifted to the right), SOMEONE should have been able to beat him. Unfortunately Gore and Kerry had the personalities of sticks, and whiny ones at that.
You claim it is intentional that I do not know the direction the Democrats want to go in, but it is really because there is no defined direction. The Democrat party has become a magnet in the last 8 years for everyone who hates Bush, but little else. I ask again? Where is the unified message? The GOP pulled a coup with the "Contract with America" (A really good document, try re-reading in context with today's government, it would have been nice if they even tried to follow through with any of it), why can't the Democrats try something similar?
Part of the problem is that the Democrat party is so diverse that it would be hard to get a unified voice from them. The is also somewhat true with the GOP, where a significant percentage dislike Bush (who is less conservative than Clinton on many issues - Read: economics) but shut up about because they feel a Democrat would be worse. We really need to ditch this stupid system of trying herd people into one of two thought camps and just vote on candidates based on their own beliefs. It would also help if they were allowed to HAVE thier own beliefs without being attacked by "their" party - Read: McCain.
FYI, I do occationally listen to Savage, and I don't think anyone can accuse him of being a Bush supporter. I probably listen to NPR more so you were a bit off on your guessing, but points for trying.
Finkployd
What would be the point of creating a new political party which will just have the election stolen from them? I agree with you, mostly, but let's keep first thing's first. Voting machines, then political parties.
And supporting Israel is one thing, actually going over there and bombing the shit out of their homeland ourselves is quite another.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
My book, podcast
these people are not able to feed themselves because they spend the money they do have on the non-essentials of life (like additictions to alcohol and/or drugs).
this is an assumption of guilt where you have no proof, it's application to policy would mean a broad punishment of the entirety of the poor or those who tried to start a business and failed like 3/4 of people who try such endeavors do just because a few have these problems.
That is an assumption of guilt when our nation is founded upon the principles that people should be assumed innocent until proven guilty.. this is the reason why we have such things as the right to bear arms.. people are assumed to be carrying the weapon for an innocent purpose such as hunting or self defence rather than a malevolent purpose such as murder or violent overthrow of the government.
I find it entertaining how the right will shriek in pain when the left proposes gun control based on this fundamental philosophy but will decry efforts to help the "disgusting poor" because "theyre all crack addicts and alcoholics". Granted it's america and people should be able to make money.. but in capitalism there are always losers of the game.. it's the nature of the system, and we should be compassionate enough to put a floor on how far they can fall.
how about having drug and alchohol testing as a requisite for receiving checks? would that suit you? (granted alcohol doesnt stay in the system very long, but drunks tend to have a constant minimal amount do they not?)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Here's a free documentary online about two people's experience investigating Diebold and voting irregularities following the 2004 election. It's a very entertaining movie that reveals many of the technical components of Diebold's tabulation process (spoiler: they use an unprotected Microsoft Access database for the central tabulators!). Highly recommended, feature length.
Considering a lot of people feel the US elections are going to be hacked (me included) my only hope is who ever does the hacking elects Ronald McDonald to congress at least then there will be a real clown in congress.
I'm sure the timing of Foley story was just coincidental right? Despite Rove's tactics, Bush should have been easy to beat. Despite the voting fraud which likely occured on both sides (although with electronic voting it most certainly shifted to the right), SOMEONE should have been able to beat him. Unfortunately Gore and Kerry had the personalities of sticks, and whiny ones at that. Funny that you should mention the Foley story. The GOP has known about it for 5 years and did nothing. As for Gore and Kerry's personalities, that's precisely the kind of caracature crap I was talking about. I hate the "everyone does it" argument. We're talking about the degrees of corruption. Yes, there was a congressman's kid busted for slashing election drive tires, but the right-wing voter disenfranchisement tactics were national. As for Democratic stands, they aren't bullshit bumper sticker slogans which is why Republicans are doing so well in the current climate. You can make a claim like "Kerry first voted for the war then he voted against it" without the details and that sticks in the public mind. It takes time to explain how misleading that statement is. As for the "they just hate Bush" argument, there's a reason people hate Bush. It's not because of his accent or the (R) after his name. Look at all of the arguments stately more eloquently than I can pull off in this thread. The Democrats are the opposition party, though a very weak one not having control of *any* branch of government. As for knowing where you get your news, I make the guesses I do because I use a wide range of sources and there's a distinctly different message coming from some places in the media. You can peg people from the arguments they use. So, when you make the argument that Dems "just hate Bush and the have no plan" when there are alternative directions expressed and people have at least rational reasons for hating Bush, well then I say you're getting most of your info from right-wing sources.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"And, if you were paying attention, the suspension of H.C. is ONLY in regards to ALIENS who are ENEMY COMBATANTS. "
It also applies to US citizens who are enemy combatants.
Enemy combatants are whoever the president says are enemy compbatants.
evil is as evil does
Funny that you should mention the Foley story. The GOP has known about it for 5 years and did nothing.
;)
Oh no, they did something, they made him co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.
The timing and origin of the story seem suspicious. Certainly the Democrats are justified in using this for maximum political gain, but did they sit on it (and potentially endanger others) or did they come forward just as soon as they found out? Mere speculation, and certainly not speculation that affects how creepy this guy is and the somewhat obvious Republican coverup, but it shows that "everyone" plays the Karl Rove (get them anyway possible) game on the hill. The posturing on both sides is getting a little silly.
So, when you make the argument that Dems "just hate Bush and the have no plan" when there are alternative directions expressed and people have at least rational reasons for hating Bush, well then I say you're getting most of your info from right-wing sources.
That does seem to be the prevailing perception. No, not on Free Republic, but with many hardline, life long liberal Democrats as well. You would have to REALLY have to head in the sand to not see that the Democrat part has some serious image and message issues. I'm not talking about individuals, there are many with clear, concise, and consistent messages. But as a party there is really nothing. Now unfortunately that is how many people vote (straight party ticket). Partly because they are lazy but also because it is quite difficult to truely educate yourself oftentimes on a candidates position. You cannot really look at what measures he did or did not vote on becasue we see time and again, the titles and primary purpose of a bill often has nothing to do with what is inside it. For example, I don't know about you but I certainly think "online gambling" when I think "port security"
Sad as it is, people vote parties, and the Republican's have been significantly more successful at (1) having a somewhat unified party message and (2) convincing the growing number within the party who disagree with Rove and that message to shut up.
As for the "they just hate Bush" argument, there's a reason people hate Bush. It's not because of his accent or the (R) after his name.
Unfortunately hating Bush has become cliche. The reasons to do so as you mention are quite numberous, but the solutions to get out of the mess he created are not so numberous. I am not saying that there are none, or that alternatives to his "I'm an idiot when it comes to both economics and forign policy" actions are not being proposed by Democrats, just that those solutions are all different. Nobody quite agrees on what is the best way out of Iraq. Nobody (on either side) has stepped up and admited that most (of not all) of the homeland security initiatives have been insane wastes of money which do nothing for actual security. Where is the national ad campaign showcasing the criminal porkbarrel spending that Republicans have engaged in? (Bridge to nowhere anyone?)
Opposition to Iraq can only get them so far, I want to see some comprehensive talking points being repeated showcasing the idiocy of the last few years and solutions or alternatives. I see some of it on Daily Kos and NPR, but often is seems lost in the "Bush is evil, Bush will kill us all" discussion.
Finkployd
It seems obvious enough that an "enemy combatant" who is a US citizen would fall under the treason clause of the constitution, Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
I see where this new law might be abused, but that's where groups like the ACLU come in. What we TRULY need to fear is the Supreme Court. Can the courts be relied upon to do the right thing? Congress critters and presidents have always tried to pull stunts like this going back to the founders themselves (John Adams and the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798), so it's up to the courts to really act as the check against that. Will the current SC be up to the task? =O
Government IS the problem.
"...if Bush and co keep screwing up that eventually will work..."
Welcome to The Diebold Voting Machine! Please make your selection:
1. George Bush Jr., our illustrious leader!
2. Jeb Bush, because our illustrous leader deserves a 4 year vacation!
3. Laura Bush, the gentle mother of our homeland!
4. George Bush Senior, the wise!
5. Write in candidate (note, you may be tried for treason or terrorism): ___________________
6. Send me to Guantanamo Bay!
Thank You for using Diebold Voting Machines!
~X~
~X~
and come up with a doable platform.
Bonus points if the platform doesn't mention Bush by name.
I call bullshit. We have not yet discovered intelligent life from other planets. This law removes habeas corpus from human beings from planet Earth. You know, the same people the US constitution claims to cover. The Constitution does not say that rights are only for US citizens.
... and then they built the supercollider.
And how do you propose the US government enforce the writ of habeas corpus for people living in countries outside US jurisdiction? You may be technically correct, but that isn't particularly meaningful in this case. Although I would note the preamble says the constitution is established for WE the People, which suggests very much it is intended for the people of the United States and not just for anybody on the planet, but I'm really neither here nor there on the issue and can see both sides of the argument. While I may agree with you in spirit that everybody on the world possesses inalienable rights, it is simply not possible or practical for the US government to see that everybody outside US jurisdiction have those rights properly afforded to them. Unless you are suggesting we are morally obligated to engage in an epic level of interventionism the whole world over...
Another point: if you look at Article I, Section 9, we that Habeas Corpus is a PRIVILEGE and NOT a right.
http://constitution.org/constit_.htm
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
So anyways talking about inalienable human rights actually does NOT cover habeas corpus, since it is a privilege, not a right.
Government IS the problem.
If we have to do two tests on them each time they want a check, then that would mean even more money out of my (and the rest of the country's) pocket. What is your aversion to buying the soup (or a sandwich or whatever else) they _need_ for them?
yeah, I was too lazy to look it up to make sure.
"It seems obvious enough that an "enemy combatant" who is a US citizen would fall under the treason clause of the constitution, Article III, Section 3:"
Obvious to who? Not the president or the congress. Why? Because if you charged somebody with treason then you would have to try them in civillian courts where they would get full protection of the constitution.
"What we TRULY need to fear is the Supreme Court. Can the courts be relied upon to do the right thing? "
No. The court has proven itself to be an extension of the political parties. Currently the court is just another arm of the republican party and will not oppose the republicans.
evil is as evil does
If we have to do two tests on them each time they want a check, then that would mean even more money out of my (and the rest of the country's) pocket.
not necessarily.. if it is as he hypothesizes, and all these "dirty filthy poor" people are actually drunks and drug addicts, then the amount saved from denying them checks will compensate for it..
if it's not as he hypothesizes, and the vast majority of these individuals really are just honest people who had some bad luck, then yes it will cost us more.. but nothing's preventing the repeal of those procedures if it's shown they cost more money than they save.
I'm just entertaining the idea of putting some empirical tests to these assertions that welfare recipients are spending their checks on substance abuse.
Wouldn't it be worth a few extra tax dollars to finally put that argument to rest, one way or another, once and for all?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
So you have electronic ballots instead of paper ones, what's difference. On the surface, a large number of false electronic ballots may seem easier to produce than a large number of paper ones, but in reality, either method is only limited by how many fake ballots you can enter before you get noticed. There is simply no way to be completely sure any election was not stolen without compromising the anonymity of the voters.
"unlikely unless the "sample" tended to systematically lie to the pollsters"
No, it is not unlikely. As I said before, voter averages vary significantly from polling location to polling location. Say, for example, that exit polls were taken at only one or two of a dozen or so polling locations in a precinct. You would almost expect the exit poll from that precinct to be different from the actual election result. Especially if exit polls were only taken at urban or rural locations rather than a mixture of the two. This wold be like taking a few core samples from only one hemisphere of the moon, and then assuming that the entire composition of the moon is represented by the samples you took. Sure, there's millions of molecules of lunar material in the samples, but it doesn't mean that you took millions of random samples.
Rigging elections has been the standard for a very long time, decades AT LEAST.
I don't believe that. It certainly has happened, many times in isolated places, but it's not a standard...at least it wasn't. And certainly never on this scale with this level of organization. For the most part I think the majority of elections in our history were, by and large, fairly honest. And I base on that on actual experience working inside the voting process. The majority of poll workers take their responsibility very seriously. Sometimes I'm surprised how careful they are, even when they disagree politically.
I don't care who did it before or when. It's a death penalty offense (or should be) in Chicago, NY, Atlanta or where ever it takes place. Find those responsible and stand them up against a wall and broadcast the execution on prime time television. That's what the integrity of elections should be worth to our country.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The postal method [Wikipedia] used in Oregon combines convenience with a paper trail. From the article:
Concerns have been raised about the possibility of election fraud in vote-by-mail elections, varying from risks of multiple voting to the destruction of mailed ballots, but actual incidents are rare in practice and not known to be more likely than elsewhere.
It is generally agreed that most people appreciate the convenience of voting by mail...
A link to the arguments pro and con is provided.
The book is "Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?" There's a page about it at:
www.electionintegrity.org/book.shtml
From the above page: the authors are Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss. Freeman is on the teaching faculty of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Organizational Dynamics, where in addition to his regular courses, he teaches workshops research methods and survey design (a domain that includes polling.) Bleifuss is editor of In These Times. An investigative reporter and columnist, his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Utne Reader, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Dissent, among many others.
U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr., wrote the forward.
I propose they don't. Why should they?
While I may agree with you in spirit that everybody on the world possesses inalienable rights, it is simply not possible or practical for the US government to see that everybody outside US jurisdiction have those rights properly afforded to them.
That's not the point. The point is that the US should lead by example, and not take away these rights from anybody when enforcing its own laws and interests.
So anyways talking about inalienable human rights actually does NOT cover habeas corpus, since it is a privilege, not a right.
But it is stipulated that it can only be repealed if Public Safety requires it. I don't see any current situation where habeas corpus would be detrimental to the public safety. In fact, it's hard to imagine any scenario outside of fiction where habeas corpus would be dangerous to the people.
... and then they built the supercollider.
But it is stipulated that it can only be repealed if Public Safety requires it.
And that is where the debate should be focused - are we in a situation where public safety requires it. I agree we are not at that point.
I don't see any current situation where habeas corpus would be detrimental to the public safety. In fact, it's hard to imagine any scenario outside of fiction where habeas corpus would be dangerous to the people.
Habeas corpus has been suspended several times in our history, most famously by Lincoln (1861), but also by Grant (in 1871, actually he had several proclomations suspending the writ, but only one is enough to prove the point).
You might suggest the suspensions were unjustified in these cases, but that would only serve to show that we can survive such abuses. The best we can do at this point is to vote out ALL the bastards who voted FOR it.
Senators who voted for this bill:
Alexander (R-TN), Allard (R-CO), Allen (R-VA), Bennett (R-UT), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burns (R-MT), Burr (R-NC), Carper (D-DE), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Coleman (R-MN), Collins (R-ME), Cornyn (R-TX), Craig (R-ID), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), DeWine (R-OH), Dole (R-NC), Domenici (R-NM), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Frist (R-TN), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Gregg (R-NH), Hagel (R-NE), Hatch (R-UT), Hutchison (R-TX), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johnson (D-SD), Kyl (R-AZ), Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Lieberman (D-CT), Lott (R-MS), Lugar (R-IN), Martinez (R-FL), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ), Murkowski (R-AK), Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Roberts (R-KS), Rockefeller (D-WV), Salazar (D-CO), Santorum (R-PA), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Smith (R-OR), Specter (R-PA), Stabenow (D-MI), Stevens (R-AK), Sununu (R-NH), Talent (R-MO), Thomas (R-WY), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA), Voinovich (R-OH), Warner (R-VA)
Representatives who voted for it:
Aderholt, Akin, Alexander, Andrews, Bachus, Baker, Barrett (SC), Barrow, Barton (TX), Bass, Bean, Beauprez, Biggert, Bilbray, Bilirakis, Bishop (GA), Bishop (UT), Blackburn, Blunt, Boehlert, Boehner, Bonilla, Bonner, Bono, Boozman, Boren, Boswell, Boustany, Boyd, Bradley (NH), Brady (TX), Brown (OH), Brown (SC), Brown-Waite, Ginny, Burton (IN), Buyer, Calvert, Camp (MI), Campbell (CA), Cannon, Cantor, Capito, Carter, Chabot, Chandler, Chocola, Coble, Cole (OK), Conaway, Cramer, Crenshaw, Cubin, Cuellar, Culberson, Davis (AL), Davis (KY), Davis (TN), Davis, Jo Ann, Davis, Tom, Deal (GA), Dent, Diaz-Balart, L., Diaz-Balart, M., Doolittle, Drake, Dreier, Duncan, Edwards, Ehlers, Emerson, English (PA), Etheridge, Everett, Feeney, Ferguson, Fitzpatrick (PA), Flake, Forbes, Ford, Fortenberry, Fossella, Foxx, Franks (AZ), Frelinghuysen, Gallegly, Garrett (NJ), Gerlach, Gibbons, Gillmor, Gingrey, Gohmert, Goode, Goodlatte, Gordon, Granger, Graves, Green (WI), Gutknecht, Hall, Harris, Hart, Hastings (WA), Hayes, Hayworth, Hefley, Hensarling, Herger, Herseth, Higgins, Hobson, Hoekstra, Holden, Hostettler, Hulshof, Hunter, Hyde, Inglis (SC), Issa, Istook, Jenkins, Jindal, Johnson (CT), Johnson (IL), Johnson, Sam, Keller, Kelly, Kennedy (MN), King (IA), King (NY), Kingston, Kirk, Kline, Knollenberg, Kolbe, Kuhl (NY), LaHood, Latham, Lewis (CA), Lewis (KY), Linder, LoBiondo, Lucas, Lungren, Daniel E., Mack, Manzullo, Marchant, Marshall, Matheson, McCaul (TX), McCotter, McCrery, McHenry, McHugh, McIntyre, McKeon, McMorris Rodgers, Mica, Miller (FL), Miller (MI), Miller, Gary, Moore (KS), Murphy, Musgrave, Myrick, Neugebauer, Northup, Norwood, Nunes, Nussle, Osborne, Otter, Oxley, Pearce, Pence, Peterson (MN), Peterson (PA), Petri, Pickering, Pitts, Platts, Poe, Pombo, Pomeroy, Porter, Price (GA
Government IS the problem.
How many times do I have to ask the same question...
Doesn't it make even more sense to buy them the soup (or whatever), then we can be _sure_ that they won't use the money in the wrong way?
This is too strict a standard:
This is the kind of thing that sounds impressive to Americans, but "innocent until proven guilty" only makes sense if you're talking about preferring criminal charges. If the question is "do we need to make our elections resistant to corruption", the possibility that fraud might occur is significant enough, let alone the probablity that fraud actually did occur.Extreme liberal? What?
The Democrats are a bit right of center. They aren't liberal.
The Republicans just make them look liberal, because they are only slightly to the left of the fascists.
The US has no major party representing anything that could be considered liberal.
I could get behind a Pirate Party candidate, though.
Last I checked the U.S. has not had a terrorist attack since 9/11 within our country. Maybe you missed the memo but it's not due to the 'terrorists' stopping.
I only pity you because you cannot see past the smoke and mirrors to realize 9/11 effected more than just you, your family, and your state.
I live in a blue state, voted for Gore and Kerry, and I have 0 respect for people who bash Bush. Not because I belive he's a good president, but because liberals have made "Bush Bashing" it's own sport. This phenominom of hatred towards one person, whether his policies have been good or bad, have instilled a seed of hatred that is unfathomable to the point that you turn against logic and reason. Logic such as saying... "Our country is less secure" while the facts are we haven't been attacked since, within our country. Any person who thinks Bush has made our country "less secure" as the same coo-coo-birds who think he can control gas prices. Lease you forget, our country has many organizations that insure our safety, regards of their political affiliation.
Extremes are never good, it doesn't matter if it's Republican, Democrate, or other. It's just I see far more Extreme liberal talk than conservative. It's people like you who dont' want to have an honest debate and educate voters on the pro's and con's of policies. All you screem through the mass media is FUD. Ironically so, given extreme liberals claim it's the Republican agenda who's using FUD to gain votes.
Bah, I wonder why I waist my time writting, but realize it's not for convincing the original post, but to inform those that are still uncertain as to what to believe.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell