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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.)
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
You (and probably also the grandparent post) misunderstand the concept. You get a print out from the machine, and you place the printout into the ballot box. The printout is in every way treated the same as the paper ballot you use in traditional systems. The only difference is that at the end of election day, there is a quick tally available electronically. The paper ballots can (and should) still be counted in order to verify that the electronic tally is correct. If there is a discrepancy, the paper tally is used.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
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.
The point in 2004 was not whether they were generally accurate or inaccurate, but how could the same methodology be very accurate in some places (less critical states than florida or ohio) and really incredibly inaccurate in only the areas that were pivitol? Is the quality of polling in Mississippi far better than in Ohio?
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!"
There was a direct correlation between accuracy of the exit poll in a given precinct with the balloting technique used. Where a paper trail exists, the exit polls were statistically more accurate than in precincts where electronic voting was used (no paper trail.)
In my opinion, that's a clear indicator of something being wrong with the vote counting in those precincts, not the exit polls. I have the raw data of exit poll numbers from several states, voting method in precincts, and the final results. There's a clear correlation. However, those data files aren't handy here - google it yourself, or follow the links from this Wikipedia article (I know -- not the most reliable source, but it's a starting point): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._presidentia l_election_controversy,_exit_polls.
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