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Diebold Demands That HBO Cancel Documentary
Frosty Piss writes "According to the Bloomberg News, Diebold Inc. is insisting that HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair. The program, 'Hacking Democracy,' is scheduled to debut Thursday, five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results. 'Hacking Democracy' is 'replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,' says Diebold. 'We stand by the film," said a spokesman for HBO. 'We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule. It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing.'"
I hadn't heard of this before, but now I'm sure to record it (assuming it gets on the air).
I love publicity-bringing lawsuits, don't you?
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. Wow, they even got Slashdot!
On Sept. 26, Byrd wrote to Jann Wenner, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, saying a story written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "Will the Next Election Be Hacked?" was "error-riddled" and that readers "deserve a better researched and reported article."
And the People deserve better researched voting methods and ones that aren't error riddled as the Diebold machines have proven to be. Diebold should be required to have warnings on their machines and paper ballot stations nearby.
Let the people decide which is better.
You have to figure HBO has a pretty sizable legal department, and wouldn't air a documentary that wasn't accurate (for fear of being sued). So if diebold's claims are untrue, all they are really doing are serving to help publicize the documentary before it airs. Brilliant move, haha. I know I had my DVR set to record it, but I can imagine many other /.ers did not... and now undoubtedly, some will.
... "The letter says Diebold wasn't in the electronic voting business in 2000, when disputes over ballots in Florida delayed President Bush's victory for more than a month and raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines." I would like to see an actual fact that states whether their claims are true or not. For instance, maybe they weren't in electronic voting business in 2000, but that doesn't mean they didn't still tally many paper votes (the aggregate of which amounts to 40% of the votes in the election)-- or that he hasn't screwed up interpreting what the film says (since he apparently hasn't seen it). Regardless of which, I think it's probably safe to assume if HBO isn't backing down, and does air the documentary, that this is largely smokescreen on the part of Diebold to try and convince the public that HBO is just an extension of the "liberal media" lying to them.
..but rather that HBO's spokesman is actually suggesting they are responding to this film, VoterGate, and not Hacking Democracy, whose UK working title is listed as "VoterGate" and whose tagline says, "Computers count America's votes in secret. 'Votergate' hacks the votes." The co-mingling of the word "Votergate" does lead to some confusion, even though the directors of each film are totally different, one is produced by "Digital Bazooka" productions and the other by "Teale-Edwards" Productions (which produced another good, but sad HBO documentary that I would reccomend watching -- Dealing Dogs). My suspicions are probably best supported by the line,"The company, which hasn't seen the film, based its complaints on material from the HBO Web site, Bear said." ..if they haven't seen the film, it's a bit difficult to suggest it is full of eggregious errors, and maybe they are commenting about 2004's VoterGate.
Regarding Diebold's claims, although the article is a little short on facts, for instance, following this section, "According to Byrd's letter, inaccuracies in the film include the assertion that Diebold, whose election systems unit is based in Allen, Texas, tabulated more than 40 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election."
Furthermore, the article is short on explanation, but I don't think this is just a crass comment, "It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing."
On a personal note, I am a documentarian, and no documentary can ever be completely "true" to everyone. Laymen make the mistake of thinking to shoot a documentary you just point some cameras at stuff, edit it, and voila. But there is so much more than that.. a documentary is about capturing the "truth" the documentarian sees. For (s)he to use cameras and mics to tell the story that (s)he saw. There is always some bias in this, and one important trick to being a good documentarian is divorcing yourself from this bias as much as possible.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Why don't we take vote on whether or not the movie can be shown? We can use the Diebold machines...
protest too much, methinks
Oh my, well golly, diebold's feelings are much more important than the integrity of our elections.
Apparently, Diebold actually did comment on the wrong documentary and screwed up factually too. Already reported on the BRAD BLOG .
If the reporting is truly unfair, the Diebold should sue, in a court of law.
Anything else is just posturing, and should be treated (read: ignored) as such.
Now this being Slashdot, I think we all know how we feel about whether or not their machines are secure.
I don't understand why an open voting system wouldn't work. (And yes I know the major hurdle would be beating the peoples in power to transition to one)
Source code is 100% open to find exploits and bugs, when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number. That'd allow for everyone to do their own count if they wanted.
I've just don't like technology getting a bad name because people abuse it. An electronic voting system would be more secure then a paper trail with PEOPLE manually counting each vote.
No?
*DrugCheese rants*
In other words, in the light of allegations of insecurity and the ease of which a Diebold DRE or tabulator (GEMS) can be modified, they nitpick the date in which they got into the voting machine industry.
Bravo, Diebold.
Also, the article's implication if I'm not mistaken is incorrect:
If I'm not mis-reading this passage, the article is implying that Florida ballots in 2000 raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines. The only problem is that the problems in Florida were due to "hanging chads" and the poor design of "butterfly ballots" in Palm Beach County, two problems which are entirely specific to paper voting methods. Maybe they meant to say "and raised questions about upgrading their voting technology" but who knows.
With people manually counting each vote, you can have representatives from all interest groups observe the process.
Is anyone else reminded of Jim Carey in Liar Liar?
Fletcher: Your honor, I object!
Judge: Why?
Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case!
Judge: Overruled.
Fletcher: Good call!
Coffee and oatmeal-raisin cookies bits out the nose - that stings!
...they are certainly bold. I wonder if they will live up to the rest of their name?
Perhaps these will be of interest http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ and a write up. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s
a documentary is about capturing the "truth" the documentarian sees more likely a domcumenary is about stacking up "evidence" to support the documentarian's point of view.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
For people concerned with democracy you'd think they'd let the whole censorship thing slide.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Lou Dobbs on CNN was talking about the Sequoia voting machines operated by the Venezuelan company, and I think we should bring to his attention the Diebold ones too. Please take a moment and send a polite comment at their feedback form
Try other big media outlets. We need the general public to become aware of this potential debacle before it's too late.
>I don't understand why an open voting system wouldn't work.
In principle it could provide unambiguous ballots, accurate counts, and as much audit trail as you could want or imagine.
In practice the systems aren't being bought with security as a criterion.
Also, hundreds of millions of people can judge the security and accuracy of a paper ballot system. The number of people who can spot off-by-one errors and exploitable memory corruption in 50+ KLoC is much smaller.
Looking back to an election that was pretty much STOLEN (by the Bush brothers and a cousin, just to mention a few), one has to wonder just how it was pulled off
"pretty much stolen"? Is that like being kind of pregnant? Which is it? Are you confusing "didn't turn out the way I wished it would" with "stolen?"
Or do you mean "stolen" as in "trying to fake up thousands of democratic-leaning votes?
A huge portion of the votes tabulated in Florida were done so on Diebold voting machines.
And no one has indicated, once, that there was anything suspect about the actual results. Plenty wrong with the people actually understanding how to cast a vote, but that's rather a different thing, isn't it.
America and our Democracy are being stolen right out from under us
So, other than just repeating that meme, what's your actual evidence that what you're saying is actually true?. The fact that someone could screw with what a piece of technology can do doesn't mean that's happening. Diebold could also screw with your bank account while you're withdrawing money through one of their ATM's. No question they could. Does this mean they're undermining the economy? What I smell is a frenzied effort to have, in pocket, a handy explanation for why fewer people that some political camps might wish will actually vote they way they're stamping their feet and insisting that they do.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
on election cheating... rfk jr. had a very nice article in Rolling Stone on 10/5 with many details; first few paragraphs below and link to full text.
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Along with all the OTHER deathblows dealt to liberty (even over the last few weeks) this one is also a critical blow. It feels like we're at the very end of a mortal combat battle and Democracy is sailing backwards into the spiked pit after the triple-katana lightning-strike mortal-blow-to-the groin attack.
ANYWAY, I found the full article fascinating.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/117171
Will The Next Election Be Hacked?
The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it all too apparent
to most Americans that our electoral system is broken. And
private-sector entrepreneurs were quick to offer a fix: Touch-screen
voting machines, promised the industry and its lobbyists, would make
voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM. Congress,
always ready with funds for needy industries, swiftly authorized $3.9
billion to upgrade the nation's election systems - with much of the
money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of
America's 180,000 precincts. But as midterm elections approach this
November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead
of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the
technology to fix an election - and across the country this year,
faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election
primaries. In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some
ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were
actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for
unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment
vulnerable to tampering. And in Ohio - where, as I recently reported
in "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have
cost John Kerry the presidency - a government report uncovered large
and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in
Cuyahoga County.
Even worse, many electronic machines don't produce a paper record that
can be recounted when equipment malfunctions - an omission that
practically invites malicious tampering. "Every board of election has
staff members with the technological ability to fix an election," Ion
Sancho, an election supervisor in Leon County, Florida, told me. "Even
one corrupt staffer can throw an election. Without paper records, it
could happen under my nose and there is no way I'd ever find out about
it. With a few key people in the right places, it would be possible to
>
Then you surely are writing your representative and telling them you want public oversight over voting machine software and hardware?
I'm really forced to wonder if the Slashdot group-think would hate Diebold as much as they do if Gore won in 2000 or Kerry won in 2004. I sincerely doubt it. If anything, they'd probably be considered as heroes in that case.
Call that a flame or troll if you want (and I'm sure that politically-charged mods who love to abuse their mod privileges will be more than willing to do so); but with the collective hatred for anything republican on Slashdot, things have finally gotten to the point where any statements against Diebold are as knee-jerk or fashionable as the rampant anti-Microsoftism and anti-republicanism that we all see. They're almost as cliché as the "overlord" and "you insensitive clod" comments.
Anyone who's ever worked with any Diebold product shouldn't be surprised by any claim of insecurity. I've never worked with their voting machines, but I have with their banking products. Most of their Windows-based solutions are unpatched, and their stance on upgrading often invovles buying an upgrade. One client was told, for example, that if they wanted to patch holes in a current ATM produc they'd need to "buy a firewall upgrade." They configure sensitive databases with usernames/passwords of "DIEBOLD." And the list goes on and on. While many companies have started to see security as a vital part of development, Diebold is stubbornly stuck in the dark ages.
Unfortunately, as both the NYT and Washington Post report, the documentary itself is a stinker. They both claim it does little to present actual problems, showing instead unfeasible hacks that admittedly would never work, and contenting itself to merely cast doubt over the voting machines rather than providing any solid evidence. And let's be honest -- it's easy to cast doubt on anything, including paper voting or anything else. On top if it all, the woman at the center of it all reportedly comes off as a crackpot, rather than someone with whom the public would actually empathize.
Not having seen it myself, I can't make any conclusions of my own, but if the reviews are accurate, this film does a disservice to the concept of secure voting by further validating the fringe/crackpot image that people already have regarding this issue.
The real news is that Diebold is so furious over such a vague "expose." What they should be doing is simply ignoring the whole thing, unless questioned specifically. By launching their own campaign against it, they're legitimizing the film -- which may actually be a good thing -- and giving it more attention than it may have otherwise received.
Personally, I think there are much bigger problems with the voting system than the machines that count the votes. Primaries, party politics, and campaign financing all throw much bigger wrenches into the gears than a couple of districts in Ohio that might have gotten shafted.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This is the best time for it to be aired (and the worst time for Diebold to try and stop it) because people might actually sit up and listen, it being election time.
Anyone who thinks that 5 days before an election is the worst time (because it might give people ideas and not enough time to stop it happening) are wrong because although it is relatively easy to hack a Diebold voting machine you still need a bit of know-how and the people who have this know-how will have known about it for a long time and there will be nothing new in the documentary.
Huh! A proposition just suddenly appeared on electronic ballots nationwide which proposes banning HBO on all cable systems and throwing all HBO executives in a Guantanamo prison. And the default value is set to "Yes" and the "No" box has been disabled. How odd...
Look, they know a genuine Panaphonics when they see one, hookay?
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
but how would we vote on it?
Fry the fuckers!
sorry, you missed the bandwagon.
-sekunder
Cause there's no way to catch that. No audit trail available, there. No way. Banks don't keep records, and customers don't even balance their books. Not once, not ever.
I am not a crackpot.
if electronic voting is going to be implemented then both the hardware and software should be Open-Source so it can be reviewed and checked for backdoors/rootkits malware & other misc. Vulnerabilities by non-partisan & impartial third parties, anything less is untrustworthy, the Voting process is too important to not be scrutinized...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
no, I think the words he meant were "was STOLEN" - but (I would assume) his intellectual honesty lead him to hedge his language because he knew he doesn't have evidence himself.
0 5/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_h acked
However, the evidence does exist and has been published. For you - read this:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/117171
for first hand accounts of memory card transfers in 2004, in Diebold machines, from an insider/whistleblower.
The Left has to grow up and start calling a spade a spade - by asserting the TRUTH directly and clearly, without blame of judgment: The Neocon executive leadership in the US are criminals, their actions undermine the tenets of Democracy, and they need to be reigned in, now (as in arraignment).
If you have some time, go drop a note to HBO at their feedback site. Make it polite and show that you appreciate HBO's support of US democracy. We really need more skepticism and scrutiny in the mass media.
if people screw with my bank account, I can tell when I check my bank balance. i have no way to know if my vote was counted, although in any system of elections that isnt based on proportional representation, most peoples votes are wasted anyway.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
if people screw with my bank account, I can tell when I check my bank balance. i have no way to know if my vote was counted, although in any system of elections that isnt based on proportional representation, most peoples votes are wasted anyway.
Hey, I'm all for a complementary paper trail following behind electronic voting, validated by the voter. But I don't assume that local election boards procuring equipment that doesn't do that is a sign that Diebold is a franchise operator of the Illuminati, etc.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You are so twisting the story.
1 4492
a s_the_2004_election_stolen
First off, you link to a new site which has reposted a blogger post from "Say Anything" blog - who apparently will say anything to make his point, even if it doesn't make sense. Most conclusions on his blog page are completely illogical.
The actual article to which you refer is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/kmbc/20061102/lo_kmbc/102
and the leadership of ARORN had nothing to do with the fraud - they immediately fired the people involved.
Now contrast this to the litany of counter examples and suspicious patterns listed here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/w
"Pretty much pregnant"? Attacking the phrasing I used is needless. I made my point. To be honest, I did not "like" either candidate.
In response to the link you included, I never once stated that nobody else has an interest in rigging votes. I was NOT taking political sides here. A democrat is just as "able" to resort to such means as a republican. Your link merely backs up my assertion that vote tampering/harvesting is taking place. Thanks.
As far as the results in Florida being in question, have you actually researched that? I am not touting it as being "THE" truth, but the documentary "Farenheit 9/11" certainly raises questions about the validity of that race and the results of it. I research issues for my OWN benefit, NOT to persuade people to change their own opinions. If you look at my statements, you may notice that I suggest that readers view the show and then do their OWN research. I do NOT direct them to any information specifically, as that can be construed as biased information based on the idea that it was "provided"(such as the link you provided).
But I'll humor you. http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
The gist of my post was to point out that people need to inform themselves. In order to do so, one must have access to information. The documentary in question is simply that. It is not incontrovertable, thus my suggestion to follow up with research into the issue. Your statement that "just because the can, does not mean they are..." is besides the point. The simple fact that they CAN, is, in itself, sufficient justification to question the whole premise of e-voting.
If Gore had won the 2000 election, we wouldn't HAVE to hate Diebold as much, because asshats like you would be doing it for us.
_ id=1099030
"Hatred for anything Republican" is not just a property of Slashdot, Anonymous Coward. Take a look around. If it wasn't for the amazing redistricting done by the Republican congress, we'd be looking at a huge Democratic victory next Tuesday.
If you don't believe me, check out this article from the Economist:
www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story
and spend a few minutes at http://www.fairvote.org./ They've got some very interesting articles on the ways redistricting and electoral rules changes have been implemented to give the GOP a "permanent majority".
That the coming election is even going to be close given this fundamentally rigged system is an indication of just how widespread the hatred of Republicans really is.
It's interesting that in a place like Slashdot, where you find people who are likely to have read something besides the bible and the Limbaugh Letter, there's a huge Progressive bias. But as we all know, technology, like reality, has a well-known liberal bias.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The simple fact that they CAN, is, in itself, sufficient justification to question the whole premise of e-voting.
Yes. I'd much prefer a variation that includes a companion paper output, validated by the voter and then secured. What I object to is the prevailing tone (and I know you know what I'm talking about) that seems to run through these threads, implying that this is all about one party, and only one party, "stealing" the election from the other. It's utter nonsense.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Libertarians and Greens demand that all Republicans and Democrats drop out of the running and give them a chance.
Seriously, it is like Diebold is trying to shoot themselves in the face.
... the last municipal elections in the province of quebec used 'e-voting' and the whole thing was a total disaster in most cases. even if the system involved using a paper input, the votes did not get recorded well.
In post-mortem tests conducted by the Directeur Général des Élection (Elections General Director), the SAME paper ballot passed multiple times in the machine recoreded votes for DIFFERENT candidates. From there on, a moratory was imposed on e-voting in the province.
so tell me, whats so hard with making an X in a circle? why do we have to make such a simple thing as voting for 1 candidate in a list so complicated? oh yeah now i get it: the harder it is to vote, the simpler it is to cheat!
"To the seeker of Truth it is immaterial from where an idea comes. The source and development of an idea is a matter for the academic."
Once you can SEE what is going on, it doesn't matter who told you. To simply dismiss ideas completely because of the source is lazy - you must think about what you see and hear, or you willfully give up youself to the manipulations of others.
The patterns in the exit-poll discrepancies that correlate with the use of electronic voting machines, the presence of Republican governors, and battle-ground states.
None of the various alternative hyphotheses that have been floated to explain this seem to hold water: e.g. were Bush fans reluctant to talk to pollsters? Answer no: it looks like there may have been some slight avoidance of pollsters on the part of Democrats.
I saw the ad for this on HBO and was pretty psyched, but it didn't seem like it was getting promoted heavily, not enough to get enough people really concerned (as they should be). But like great things in this wonderfully Karmic universe, Diebold starts fussing and inadvertently calls mass attention to something that normally would have slipped under the lemmings radar.
The real beauty of it, is that this was a story that the mainstream wasn't touching for whatever reason (hell maybe they are really the ones in control of the voting machines), but now that Diebold is making a fuss.. now that's News! Whoo hoo... boy howdy, get 'er done... whatever... life is funny.
--- Nothing To See Here ---
"The people" aren't really qualified to make that decision. Hell, most elections commissions aren't qualified.
I'm obviously not going to defend Diebold, but having multiple systems of voting is just asking for trouble. It is one thing to have provisional ballots available as a backup or for questionably-eligible voters. It's another thing entirely to have multiple balloting systems running at the same time in the same location. Plus, paper ballots are no less susceptible to voter fraud then electronic systems. Many ballot boxes have gone missing in the history of democracy. The key issue is that the flaws in Diebold's systems may allow relatively few people to manipulate a large number of machines.
In any case, a low-tech solution to the problem is available: voter-verified printouts attached to the electronic machine. You get all of the benefits of the electronic machine, and the losing party can still count paper ballots if they wish. The only downsides are increased system cost, increased maintenance, and decreased reliability. It's a fair trade off in my opinion, but apparently not to the knuckleheads in charge of procuring these machines.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The "prevailing tone" that you refer to (and yes, I am well aware of it) is a product of the prevailing evidence that it IS one party responsible.
I'll say what you are reluctant to voice yourself. The republicans stole the presidency. Why do I say that? Because the democrats LOST. If the democrats won and it was indicated that they used nefarious means to do so, I assure you, the "prevailing tone" here in these forums, and elsewhere, would be quite different.
Criticizing the "prevailing tone" is akin to criticising a majority vote. You certainly have the right to do so. Thats the beauty of free speech. But criticizing someone for being a part of that majority is rediculous. They are but a small part of that majority.
You cannot be a "sore loser"(which I think you are referring to those responsible for this "prevailing tone" as being) if you won.
And you thought the backlash from getting your /. comment wrong was intense.
If the world becomes an angry mob, it's time to get in the pitchfork-and-torch business!
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Maybe for their next move, they can send in some guy with baseball bats to break the knees of those darn journalists. That'd be sure to fix all their PR problems!
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
>with the collective hatred for anything republican on Slashdot, things have finally gotten to the point where any statements against Diebold are as knee-jerk or fashionable as the rampant anti-Microsoftism and anti-republicanism that we all see.
What does "hatred for anything republican" have to do with Diebold, unless Diebold is Republican? Shouldn't a voting machine company be politically neutral?
Paper ballots are just as tamper prone. This seems to be a fact that always goes unmentioned with these discussions.
[...] ones that aren't error riddled as the Diebold machines have proven to be.
I'm not sure you're being accurate, here... it's only error-ridden if the software doesn't work as the designers intended (regardless of what the users want/expect it to do).
Oh yeah? Well, I demand that Diebold retract their demand!
While I'm at it, I demand that the entire Diebold board of directors watch "Hacking Democracy" in its entirety...
and in one sitting...
with no bathroom breaks!
Ha-ha!
Also, I demand that Diebold go back and conclusively verify the integrity of voting machines used in 2004!
Furthermore, I demand that Diebold verify all electronic and paper ballots from the 2000 election!
Take that y2k! Take that Electoral College! Take that... er... YOU-!
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.
George W. Bush, the only president to serve two terms without ever being elected.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
The review over at the Washington Post wasn't exactly steller. It seems the documentary could have used facts much more to their advantage but rather relied more on implication and innuendo rather than following through on their leads.
The New York Times and The Washington Post are the LAST places I would look for reviews of a documentary that criticizes the tools of the current administration. Both are notorious for "selective" journalism.
Its my honest opinion that ANY mainstream news outlet is suspect. Both the NYT and TWP are reliant on politicians/insiders for "scoops" and because of that, have an inherent interest in "serving" them to some extent.
As I said in another post, watch the show, do your OWN research and come to your OWN conclusions. Do NOT let others decide for you the validity of the ISSUE. The content may be skewed, but the whole premise of the show is to bring to the forefront of the american consciousness the idea that maybe, just maybe, the idea of voting in a manner that gives someone the ability to control elections is POSSIBLE.
From the article summary:
"And you can trust us on this because we are the experts on inaccurate reporting!", they continued.
After all, five days is just long enough for the documentry to teach Republicans how to eploit the "bugs", but not long enough to deal with the red tape of changing the voting devices. They'll have it rigged more than ever!
I'm not just going to record it, I'm gonna make sure my parents and others who HAVEN'T ALREADY heard about Diebold security flaws.
With an electronic voting machine, how do you tell the difference between a 'ballot' that the user screwed up and a ballot where the machine secretly overrode the user's vote?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Or do you mean "stolen" as in "trying to fake up thousands of democratic-leaning votes?
And by "thousands" you mean "about eight"? From TFA:
And no one has indicated, once, that there was anything suspect about the actual results. Plenty wrong with the people actually understanding how to cast a vote, but that's rather a different thing, isn't it.
Really? That's news to me. And to respected statisticians who have looked at the results:
So, other than just repeating that meme, what's your actual evidence that what you're saying is actually true?
Oh, I don't know. Means, motive, and opportunity, perhaps? Results that just don't add up? An unfortunate history of election fraud in certain parts of the South? (this coming from someone born and raised in Virginia) Grounds, at the very least, to count the paper ballots (the practive of which Florida attempted to ban somewhat recently)?
What I smell is a frenzied effort to have, in pocket, a handy explanation for why fewer people that some political camps might wish will actually vote they way they're stamping their feet and insisting that they do.
Indeed. Damned partisan hacks stamping their feet and trying to block out reality. How dare they?
-jdm
Thanks!
emt 377 emt 4
"The people" aren't really qualified to make that decision."
Yes, This would seem to be Diebold's official stand on choosing Government officials.
We are all just people.
Well, if you're going to make a documentary about the integrity of Diebold's voting machines, don't the machines have to have at least some integrity?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Anymore, I feel more like a lab rat than an actual citizen.
Hmm...No wonder "the Matrix" struck me as a horror movie....Hmmm.
I still just cannot quite comprehend Joe Average not getting this (the whole e-voting spectacle in it's current [mis]use!); Damn- how frikkin' dense do ya' gotta be!
Chief Test Monkey and Head Lab Rat signing off with this reminder kiddies:
In Soviet^H^H^H^H^H^HDiebold America, machine votes for you.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Diebold could also screw with your bank account while you're withdrawing money through one of their ATM's. No question they could. Does this mean they're undermining the economy?
Funny you mention Diebold ATMs. The last time I used one of them, I received a receipt that told me the date and time of my transaction, the last four digits of the card I used for the transaction, the details of the transaction (how much money I withdrew) and how much is left in my account. Thus if Diebold wanted to screw with my bank account, I have a paper trail I can use to support my version of what happened during that transaction.
It sounds like it would be a relatively simple matter for Diebold to include that module of code and one of the printers they order for their ATMs in their voting machines. It kind of makes you wonder why they don't, doesn't it?
It's much easier to fraudently signup voters or submit fraudulent change of address forms like ACORN does.
i -acorn-voter-fraud-scandal.html
Here's one blog with links and such.. (not mine.)
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/missour
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
I understand that this is a little off topic, but I have a suggestion to the voter issue you have in your country. Make the ballot officials in each constituency be selected the same way you select jurors for a trial. Instead of lawyers and Magistrates overseeing and rejecting potential candidates, have a duly selected representative (or better yet, the person who's name is on the ballot) performing the role. This way it will be impossible to bribe the officials, as noone will know who they are until a few days before the election. It will also be impossible for any of the major parties to cry foul over issues of rigging paper ballots.
I tend to agree with the general feelings on Slashdot in regards to these machines, but for a slightly diferent reason. A corporation has its own bottom line to consider, why the hell wouldn't they want to keep in power, the people that pay them millions for their technology.
With an electronic voting machine, how do you tell the difference between a 'ballot' that the user screwed up and a ballot where the machine secretly overrode the user's vote?
I agree - which is why a companion piece of paper, reviewed by the voter and secured, really strikes me as the way to go. But that being said, how do you (given the scenario you've described), conclude the theft of an election? How do you conclude that any more than you do election results that might have been even worse for the losing side, absent their own hacking?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It kind of makes you wonder why they don't, doesn't it?
No, it makes me wonder absolutely no such thing whatsoever. It makes me wonder why, for example, my local election board (run pretty much entirely by Democrats, just BTW), hasn't pressed for the procurement of machines that do offer that exact behavior. It's called putting out an RFQ, reviewing bids, and purchasing the right equipment. Maybe they can buy them from Hugo Chavez' voting machine company. The point is, Diebold is just one equipment manufacturer. If they don't meet the specs set by the customer, they either get to come up with somehing different, or lose the business to someone else. Demand drives this process. Demonizing they people who build what they've been asked to supply is a little silly.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I am watching Hacking Democracy on HBO as i write this (about 45 minutes into the 1 hour program). My conclusions are: 1. Diebold has a broken system that needs fixing. Without more checks & balances, and verifiable ballots (paper receipts, etc.), voting systems will continue to be a sore topic. 2. The folks at BlackBoxVoting.org are zealots that are against any voting technology other than hand-counting votes. 3. Much like viruses, there will always be people attempting to obtain any possible advantage during an election and as long as politicians are involved, an optimal solution will *not* be implemented. How is this different from any other election in history? Maybe it is the *system* that is broken, not the machines...
Open electronic voting would allow anyone to observe the plan, not the process. There is no way to guarantee that the published software was actually running on the voting computers at the time. You know that you have a recorded vote in a database. You do not know that that vote was actually cast, or that it is what the voter intended. For that, you need paper ballots.
That said, paper ballots and electronic voting are not mutually exclusive. There are automatically scanable paper ballots available that give the advantages of both sides.
Your anti-memishness is an interesting meme, all by itself.
I kid! In fact, after I rattled that post off, I was actually greatly annoyed with myself for uttering that now-burned-out word. What we need here is a synergistic paradigm shift towards a new, leveraged framework that enhances our core conceptual competencies. I will swear off memedness, as you are absolutely correct.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Receipts can be deniable. In other words you could get a receipt that you can verify using it that your vote was counted the right way, but you could also have it so you can pretend that you voted another way and only you can tell that that vote isn't authentic. Cryptography is fun.
If indeed, some manipulation of the voting process is occuring, it is completely rediculous to assume an open-bid process would be able to subvert that manipulation. I find it hard to believe that would occur when such things as Haliburton receiving contracts with NO bidding process are taking place.
Even if it(an open-bid process) did occur, all the miscreants would have to do is create SEVERAL companies that produce voting machines to create the IMPRESSION that it was a fair process. If you think that is not possible as a tactic, my only repsponse would have to be that at one time I did not think it possible to steal a presidency by vote manipulation.
More to the point, in response to your post, I think your missing the point. This is not a discussion about republicans tampering with voting machines, and thus, elections. It is a discussion about the fact that ANYONE could be doing it. It is a discussion about the fact that there is evidence to assert that Diebold is making product that can be used to rig votes.
Simply put, Diebold is leading the country to believe the technology is foolproof, when, in fact, it is far from. And until the technology is PROVEN to be foolproof, we should not be relying on it to put our politicians into office.
Sure, many inferences to the corruption surrounding the 2000 election are being made(even by myself), it is only being cited as evidence against trusting our democracy to unproven(and quite possibly, corrupt) technology.
As reported in the Register, the machines are already taking care of their masters.
Pity the electorate, sheeple though they are.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Obfuscation! Foul! Foul, I say!
An open source electronic voting system could certainly be beneficial, but I'm not convinced that any system will work unless the people who administer it are both capable and motivated to administer it properly.
In response to your other suggestion:
This should never be allowed in an anonymous election, because it means that votes are only anonymous for as long as the voter is not threatened to hand over their receipt, or to prove their vote to someone else, which defeats the purpose of having an anonymous election.
Besides, consider what would happen if the elected representatives did something that was unpopular. Want to cast doubt on the authenticity of the election after the event? Just find enough people to claim that their vote was recorded incorrectly. It's their word against yours.
All the idea offers is a feeling of satisfaction for voters, but it opens the door for more controversy. If voters need to feel satisfied that their votes were recorded correctly, it should be accomplished by having a stable and reliable system that all voters (within reason) can understand the complete workings of. Perhaps this would require a mandatory manual recount of the voter verified paper trail after the election to confirm the result, at least in areas where the count was reasonably close, but I think it'd be absolutely worth it to have a fair election.
"The question is addressed to those enthusiasts that do care and will sort the matter out in a few hours..."
LOL. MOD PARENT UP. I love the feeling of power that technically knowledgeable people have. And it is increasing. (I'm not suggesting that anything illegal be done; I just love the feeling of knowing how things work.)
Talking about power, anyone need Diebold parts? You must have an account with them, but hey, no problem, right? Just tell the local elections boss, "Oh yes, we'll need two of those fazongas immediately." Response: "Well, if you say so, order them now." Check out the memory card at $155.00 for 128 MB. Ohhh, it's "industrial grade". Well, all right.
Off topic: Did you know that George W. Bush had a top-of-the-charts song written about him? The song, "American idiot", was number 1 on the music charts in Canada, number 3 in Britain, and in the top 10 in many other countries. No matter whether you vote Democrat or Republican, you'll have to admit that is amazing.
--
Funniest George W. Bush Comedy Videos
'Checks and Balances' are also a strong solution in the problem of fraud in an election.
I was watching a replay on C-SPAN3 12/07/04 History of the 2004 Election Process: Common Cause and Century Foundation where election officals were addressing the electronic voting machine and they ansewered some Linux and Open Source questions also.
Specifically David Jefferson the California Secy of State Technical Oversite Committee Chairman.
He basically says that do not soley rest on the case of open sourcing it is the final solution but it goes far beyond that. He himself says that he would eventually like to see it open sourced.
"Source code is 100% open to find exploits and bugs, when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number. That'd allow for everyone to do their own count if they wanted."
You've solved one part of the problem, but here's something a lot more difficult:
How do you know the binaries on the voting machine match the source code you're looking at. I think that problem is non-trivial.
I think a better way to use electronic voting machine is use them so that all they do is "print" a paper ballot. The paper ballot is put into a ballot box (as done now), and the results can be tabulated using a scanner. The voter can verify the vote is as he/she cast it, and there is a record of the vote.
Simple.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number
That's illegal - because it enables a voter to prove how he voted to someone else.
- This enables vote-buying schemes.
- It also breaks the secret ballot by enabling pressure (by employers, thugs, and corrupt officials) on the voters to vote a particular way and prove they did.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
1.Make it Open Source along with good security for the machines to prevent tampering (heck, this is one of the few places Trusted Computing would actually be usefull).
2.Use open documented hardware so that even less binary unverifiable code is required. (do touch screens and reciept type printers exist that have open specifications?)
3.Everyone who votes gets a record in the database (i.e. add to the counts) and a paper ballot. The paper ballot contains a human readable and machine readable record of the vote (one answer is to use something like they use for those electronically scanable multiple choice tests, another is to print a barcode along with a human readable vote record)
4.If there is a question over the accuracy of the internal database count, you can go back and scan the balot papers.
5.If there are still questions, you can go back and manually count votes.
CHeck this out wow http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2609 065&page=1 news
No wonder i like opensource, we should be able to create a comunity sponsired project in direct oposition ti diebold, s%*t we do a better job than them at least.
"Too bad that bureaucrats' hunger for power is never matched by greater quantities of wisdom or intelligence!!--Could it
the guilty always plead the fifth... FIFPH!!! FIIIIIIFH!!! (sorry... I really couldn't get the whole chapelle show infection out with letters)
why can't you just use the slashdot poll to vote for your next president? ;)
with good technology. That is if you don't mind 12 year-old hackers deciding who gets elected in your elections, instead of the people. I guess it is just a matter of what political party will bribe the 12 year-old hackers the most to rig the election in their favor. Imagine the Green or Reform party wins with 51% of the votes in every state. Imagine in 2008 that the Communist Party gets their candidate elected as President. Heck, I can do even better, imagine that Hackers form their own political party and win every seat in the House, Congress and Senate in 2006, and the Whitehouse in 2008. Imagine Kevin Mitnick and Gary Morris Jr. as President and Vice-President of the USA from the Hacker party.
P.S. Doesn't Diebold use OS/2 in their voting machines like their do their ATMs? You know, the OS that hasn't been patched since IBM gave up on it way back in the 1990's and finally stopped supporting it in the early 21st century, except for the OEM copy called eCom Station or whatever. OS/2 the OS that Microsoft helped develop with IBM, and then eventually dumped for Windows and basically stole from IBM to make Windows NT, Windows 95, with major modifications. OS/2, the OS that AmigaDOS users joke about being Half an OS because IBM never finished it and the slash is a division symbol anyway. OS/2 which never got modern things like USB support, and modern hard drives over 120Gig have problems with it. Few things are more pathetic than OS/2, like GEOS, GEM, QNX, 386-MOS, Desqview, and CP/M-X86. OS/2, the operating system that time forgot. Yeah, that OS/2, that IBM abandoned for Linux over. OS/2 the only OS that shoot itself into the foot with the WIN-OS2 subsystem that ran 16 bit Windows programs so that developers no longer needed to make native OS/2 versions anymore as the 16 bit Windows versions ran on OS/2 just as well as the real Windows. Then after just about everyone gave up on making native OS/2 versions, Microsoft pulled a switch with 32 bit Windows programs that didn't run under WIN-OS2, and locked IBM and other OEMs out of using 32 bit Windows code in competing operating systems anymore. OS/2 the cursed operating system that took its users down with it. OS/2, even using Star Trek marketing like calling version 3.0 Warp, and using actors from Star Trek to advertise it, still couldn't give copies of OS/2 Warp away for free to most of the world, including Star Trek geeks. OS/2 the operating system uploaded to the Borg flagship and caused it to crash because there was no drivers available for supporting the Borg hardware, causing the defeat of the Borg fleet and saving the Earth. Yeah that OS/2 at the heart of the Diebold voting machines.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I had hoped for a powerful documentary such as HBO's normal fare, or something from PBS's Frontline. It seemed more like "gotcha" journalism, or some UFO investigation. I realize that it must be entertaining in addition to just mundane reporting, but it was a bit too much.
In principle I agree that an open source voting system would help lend some kind of transparency to elections, but only in principle.
In practice, it would do basically nothing. The problem isn't really that we don't know what the code in these things is doing, it's that we have absolutely no checks and balances in place over the machines at all.
There is more or less nothing stopping people from putting something completely different on these machines to begin with. They publish the source code, and it checks out fine, but what's running on the machines is nothing even close to what they published.
The process involved in making sure these machines haven't been tampered with would work nearly as well with closed source as with open source. There would need to be tests that would fool these machines into thinking it was the real deal and then make sure that each vote is counted correctly. If they're not, the machine fails.
But this process doesn't exist, so whether or not the source code is open makes little difference.
the leadership of ARORN had nothing to do with the fraud - they immediately fired the people involved
Except, they went through this exact same thing in 2003 and 2004. Their excuse is that, as an organization, they can't be held accountable for what individuals working for them do. So... what is the point of the group? What's 'organized' about what they're doing, if the one key thing they're organized to do can be so grossly corrupted?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Much harder.
Especially considering that the Dow isn't a good direct indicator of economic health. If you consider how well the dollar isn't doing, the DOW isn't doing that hot.
The Bush spend and spend fiscal policy has pushed the US debt to the greatest it's ever been. As Alan Greenspan tried to explain, increasing the national debt is the worst thing you can do for the economic health of the US. At least the Democrats want to balance the income and the outgo, as anybody with a pocketbook and a job should understand.
As far as the Republicans being tougher on terrorism: prove it. Prove that Iraq wasn't a distraction from real terrorism. Prove that Iraq didn't contribute to terrorism, as a recent intelligence report indicates.
So, assuming you weren't being obliquely ironic, you are a nard. If you were being all ironical and stuff, I apologize. I'm not in the most subtle of moods right now, as there are a lot of Bush apologists out there, considering he's an asshat with a terrible approval rating, and I'm really worried that Bush and his gang have fucked us over to the point of no recovery.
In any case, Allah Be With You.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
This is a bad thing... no matter what the outcome of the elections is, (democrat, Republican, landslide, close...), election fixing is going to be claimed/suspected. Where there are several races which are purported to be very close, this will only fuel internal divisions in the U.S. voter base. (How many documentaries, (propaganda), hacking guides, etc... have/are going to be released slandering Diebold machines before the elections. It also seems like someone wants to keep voter turnout to a minimum.)
I know it isn't the best solution, but, after the recounting fiasco of 2000, who could blame government agencies for wanting to make the voting computerized?
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
And by "thousands" you mean "about eight"?
No, I mean "thousands."
As in, 15,000 with problems, and at least 1,500 so far that are likely fraud. Which is to say, a lot more that "eight."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I've read up on some on PunchScan, though I'm no expert. I think its got potential.
- Alice, @acarback
Let's see.
Tens of thousands of voters from poorer (usually Democratic) counties being erroneously included on a list of felons, thus not being allowed to vote. The list was compiled by a company in the employ of Republican campaigners.
Per-capita, older and fewer machines being sent to Democratic counties.
Unofficial recounts that indicate that Gore won.
State-initiated opposition to recount requests.
And the list goes on.
There's good, solid evidence the 2000 election was stolen, pure and simple. Whether it was intentional or not is another question. But there were more than enough anomalies without electronic voting to make it . . . irregular, to say the least.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
OK, assuming the worst-case scenario - the elections are stolen - can a class-action lawsuit be started to nullify the election results on the grounds of insecurity and force a re-election with only paper-based voting allowed?
That would definitely work, but at that point, why even use a machine to make the initial mark at all?
You could just use a piece of paper and mark it with a bingo blotter (a really big, heavy magic marker) that was reflective or absorptive of UV light or something, and then scan that.
Having a touch screen is just unnecessary and wasteful in the first place. A fill-in-the-bubble sheet with REALLY BIG BUBBLES (so that all the retards in Florida could figure it out) would work just as well, and probably be less confusing to many people.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I agree, never thought of that.
Mod me Down!!
*DrugCheese rants*
Only if by "no less susceptible" you mean "also susceptible."
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
You use the machine, it prints a ballot with your choices in human-readable format. You check what it did, click ok, and it sends in your unofficial vote electronically (but not over the public Internet). You drop the official ballot in the box -- which is the act of voting. The paper remains the officlal ballot. By the time the polls close on the West Coast, the unofficial results can be announced. The official results come out in the next day or so, and if they don't match, bring in the lawyers, reporters, and accountants.
It's lots harder to tamper with two systems that use completely different mechanisms.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I saw the HBO documentary a few hours ago. Damn, those machines are sickeningly easy to manipulate. And yet Diebold still says they're safe as they can be. This place is fucked up beyond belief, I really hope this is some sort of bad dream and that we'll all wake up and forget about it.
Squeakiness is next to godliness.
Here is the long and short of it: E-Voting machines are not perfect and we need to secure them for 100% accuracy.
That is it, sorry to disappoint - the evidence they had saying Diebold favored the GOP were hearsay at best.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
The Washington Post review is more like what you described, but even with them their chief complaint is that the film doesn't give enough time to other examples of Republican voter fraud. They said:
As for Bev Harris being a crackpot, well, she is. Everyone I know who has had personal contact with her has been burned by her. But she does seem to be effective at raising the awareness of this issue, even as she detracts from it with her behavior. She seems to be a two steps forward, one step backwards type of person. But whatever her motives, she's doing a service to her country by making people more aware of the problems with Diebold.
Actually you said something rather juvenile and insipid. It doesn't really matter whether the machines are being used to favor democrats or republicans. I'm sure they get messed with by whomever happens to be running things in a particular district. The point is that they are bad for democracy. The implementations are extremely shoddy and provide no way to verify the actual vote that doesn't depend upon the machines that are already in question. Until such time as a sound, verifiable method of operation is implemented, these machines should not be used. Simple as that. And regardless of whatever bias you perceive, Slashdot has all sorts of people, and all sorts of opinions get aired here. If we all thought the same, we wouldn't have so many huge argument threads all the time.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I just finished watching this documentary on Movie Central here in Canada.
IMHO it is a very well presented out documentary that manages to express the technical oversights of Diebold in a way that the average person can understand. The final scenes where they prove to the election officials that the smartcard hack is possible using their machines under theit control was pretty moving. One election official lady even started to cry and I must admit I actually felt a little choked up.
This documentary does make Diebold look very bad and it will no doubt sway at least sway some favour away from the name Diebold.
You want actual, concrete evidence? OK. Here is a transcript of a piece that was originally broadcast in 2004 on This American Life, a syndicated public radio show out of Chicago:
http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2004/10/jack_hitt _on_re_1.htm
I think it's pretty damning. If you want to refute the idea that there's shady stuff going on -- and that it's largely performed by Republicans -- the burden of proof is on you. Personally, I don't see why you could put anything past Rove, Cheney, or Rumsfeld. Why would you trust those people?
-----------
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. -- Mark Twain
A persecution complex, expressed with vague whining: check.
Cowardly posting with an anonymous account: check.
An inability to understand that legitimate elections matter in a democracy: check.
A stated belief that the only ethics or motivation anyone has is whether or not their candidate wins: check.
Yep, you're a Republican all right.
And I remember a time when posting right-wing, Ayn Rand type opinions was the norm on Slashdot, and it was the liberals who had to constantly defend their beliefs from multitudes of conservatives. That time was when Clinton was in office and we were enjoying peace and prosperity. Amazing how six years of incompetence, ignorance, malfeasance, and evil can change the tone of a forum, eh?
With an electronic voting machine, how do you tell the difference between a 'ballot' that the user screwed up and a ballot where the machine secretly overrode the user's vote?
that's a good question and a good reason for electronic voting machines to be required to produce a paper record of the vote.
However, they are talking about the 2000 presidental election and Florida. Since the balloting in Florida was done on paper and not with electronic voting machines, your question is not relevent to the discussion in this thread.
I would like to point out that a paper trail for electronic voting still wont stop the accusations of cheating though. These kinds of accusations have been going on since before electronic computers were invented, and in the 2000 election accusations of voting fraud in places that used paper ballots were just as prevalent as accusations of fraud are in the last election.
In my opinion, both sides are unrepentantly corrupt and many (especialy Diebold) voting machine makers are incompetent, greedy and corrupt. We should throw them all out and start over.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
NO lawsuit! First Amendment and New York Times v. US--no prior restraint, which resulted in the removal of an injunction against the New York Times for publishing the first in a series re: the Pentagon Papers! Diebold is trying to pull the same kind of crap AND they don't have a leg to stand on.
I don't understand why it has to be computerized.
Just about everyone is familiar with scantron type forms from school.
With scantron you have your paper trail that can't be messed with through software and a way to count ballots quickly.
a correction to my post:
the Florida balloting in 2000 was done with electronic voting machines (at least in some districts) that produced paper ballots that were then counted. They are not paperless electronic voting machines.
The question in the post i was responding to is an important question to ask about paperless electronic voting machines, but isn't an issue on one where a paper ballot is produced.
I should have been more specific than just "electronic voting machines" in my previous comment and apologise for any confusion that may have caused.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Yes, political protest songs are often popular. But I've never heard of one that called a president of the United States "Idiot".
It wasn't Gore's intention to "game" the system by asking for the first recounts to be in those four counties in Florida. Rather, that was the legal mechanism he was supposed to follow in order to eventually trigger a state-wide recount. I think he should have taken a page from the Republican playbook and said "screw the law, we're going to win this in the court of public opinion and then make a new law". He should have loudly and immediately agitated for a full state-wide recount regardless of Florida's electoral procedures. He really opened himself up to Republican attacks by giving the appearance of wanting a selective recount.
There was, of course, one full state wide recount, the NORC recount done after the election by a consortium of media groups. That recount used six possible criteria for spoiled ballots and found that Al Gore won the state under all six scenarios. Further, the judge that would have ruled on a state wide recount said that he would have insisted that overvotes be counted, that is, votes where voters punched a chad for Gore and also filled the write-in field Gore due to ambiguous instructions. This alone would have given Gore more than enough votes to win the state and the presidency regardless of butterfly ballots and Katherine Harris's various manoeuvres.
And by "thousands" you mean "about eight"? From TFA:
The Kansas City Election Board told KMBC they found suspicious forms, such as seven applications from one person and an application for a dead man.
The use of the phrase "such as" means "here are a couple examples", not "this is all we've found"
If i say the employee database at work has employee names in it, such as "bob johnson" and "larry anderson"; that doesn't mean there are only two names in the database.
you undermine your own argument when you misinterpret statements like that.
Oh, I don't know. Means, motive, and opportunity, perhaps?
None of those are evidence. It's a good way to determine who to look at when you suspect a crime has been committed, but it isn't evidence.
Results that just don't add up?
Still not evidence, but a good reason to look for some evidence of election tampering.
An unfortunate history of election fraud in certain parts of the South? (this coming from someone born and raised in Virginia)
election profiling?
I agree that if an area has a history of problems with elections, I'd probably want to institute things like a mandatory recount in those areas so that you verify the accuracy of the results, but a history of illegal behaviour isnt itself evidence of criminal activity.
Grounds, at the very least, to count the paper ballots
Absolutely.
(the practive of which Florida attempted to ban somewhat recently)?
I read your article and Florida did not attempt to ban counting the paper ballots.
The Florida election board made a rule saying that there would be no recounts in districts using paperless voting systems because there were no ballots to count in a recount. Districts that used systems that produced paper ballots would still be subject to recounts.
That rule was thrown out by the Florida court as a violation of state law that requires a manual recount be possible and required the paperless systems to produce some way for a recount to be possible.
So basically, the election board did something stupid while trying to solve a problem with the paperless system and the state courts slapped them for it and told them they have to make the system accomodate the law, not the other way around.
Personally, the fact that the system doesn't conform to state election law requirements seems like a big reason a sane person wouldn't purchase them in the first place. However, seeing some of the ridiculous purchasing decisions that get made in the company i work for (and others), i believe this was done through incompetence and lazyness and not part of a malicious agenda.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
And no one has indicated, once, that there was anything suspect about the actual results.
"In Precinct lB of Gahanna, in Franklin County, a computerized voting machine recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that precinct, however, there are only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up. Once the "glitch" had been identified, the president had to be content with 3,893 fewer votes than the computer had awarded him."
Though, admittedly, that can't really be called "suspect" so much as "horrifying."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The film also reveals the shocking truths that the sky is blue, water is wet, and confirms the long-held rumor that former Pope John Paul II was in fact Polish.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
- CEO promises to help Republicans win the vote
- CEO is actively involved in Bush re-election campaign
- CEO's company makes voting machine with no paper trail, no audit capability, no way at all to verify that the numbers being spit out are related to actual votes.
- Company's voting machines are used in states with close outcomes
- Company's voting machines are used in states whose election outcomes were starkly different from the straw polls, but the difference was not randomly distributed--the variation benefited only one political party, the very one the CEO promised to keep in office. Straw polls are mathematically reliable enough to be use to spot actual election fraud on other nations. Even if you don't consider them reliable, they are still used to spot election fraud, meaning statisticians do consider them reliable enough to analyze election results.
- People get suspicious
- People like you are suddenly mystified why the hell anyone would be skeptical. You can't think of any reason, any reason at all, why someone would be less than credulous about Diebold election machines.
It must be liberal bias, you say. Yep, liberal bias. Nothing to see here. Did you strike your head? I'm not calling you a flame or a troll--I'm calling you deliberately obtuse. Even if Diebold is in actuality as pure as the driven snow, even if in actuality their voting machines are not crooked, it still stinks to high heaven. There is EVERY reason to be skeptical. You have proven, admitted bias, plus a black-box voting scheme where it is (by design) possible to steal an election and not get caught, and then the results don't match the straw polls, the very polls that were considered reliable BEFORE your vote tallies didn't match them. Are you serious?...only authorized republican-minded Diabold-techs can manipulate the results!
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
It is amazing how arrogant the people/parties/groups that think nothing but reaching their own ends by any means (negativity) can be.
I amaze at how this 'diebold' firm can come up and object to some documentary about their intendedly faulty product, when their product's flaws were exposed with visual proof in a spectrum ranging from state investigations to high-profile late night tv shows.
And more amazing is that how these people have not been sued and punished yet.
Read radical news here
I remember that when I was in the US Navy in 1972-76, I cared a great deal about who was president because the Commander in Chief was the man making decisions like should the country spend my life on this or that. There is a lot more to who wins than just partisan politics. It makes a crucial difference to our fighting men and women, our poor, and our unemployed, who is in charge. This country obviously needs some strong leadership, from someone with some rationall values. Fiscally conservative would be nice. I have lost count of how many zeroes there are in the national debt. I think when I was in high school the national debt was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I indend to vote in a few days, and I sincerely hoope my one little vote at least gets counted correctly.
The use of the phrase "such as" means "here are a couple examples", not "this is all we've found"
If i say the employee database at work has employee names in it, such as "bob johnson" and "larry anderson"; that doesn't mean there are only two names in the database.
you undermine your own argument when you misinterpret statements like that.
First off, the GP claimed that the fraud was on the order of "thousands of registrations", but the only places in which his article mentioned numbers were the 7 duplicates and 1 dead person, along with 4 people getting 2 counts of fraud-related indictments. Stretching it a bit, I could see dozens. But it you want to talk about misinterpreting statements, talk to the GP poster.
An unfortunate history of election fraud in certain parts of the South? (this coming from someone born and raised in Virginia)
election profiling?
Just an understanding of history. Both long ago and not-so-long-ago.
I agree that if an area has a history of problems with elections, I'd probably want to institute things like a mandatory recount in those areas so that you verify the accuracy of the results, but a history of illegal behaviour isnt itself evidence of criminal activity.
And I wrote that I was 100% certain fraud had occurred .... where, exactly? I believe I was simply saying that something was rotten in Denmark and it was time to actually get to the bottom, not make unfounded accusations of "thousands" or "tens of thousands" of fraudulant registrations. At the very least, the GP needed to find a better source for their numbers because they one they cited conflicted with their claims by at least two orders of magnitude.
The Florida election board made a rule saying that there would be no recounts in districts using paperless voting systems because there were no ballots to count in a recount. Districts that used systems that produced paper ballots would still be subject to recounts.
To an extent. The exact details of the recount statute and court ruling are complex, but it boils down to this:
o the only time a county can initiate any recount is if the totals are within one-half of one percent of votes cast
o even then, a manual recount may not be ordered if the number of overvotes, undervotes, and provisional ballots is fewer than the number of votes needed to change the outcome of the election
o in the unlikely event that a recount does occur, the first recount must be done electronically, either by re-printing the results from the touchscreens or by re-running the ballots through a scanner
o after the initial "recount", the only way they can move onto a manual recount is if the new totals are within one-quarter of one percent of each other
o even then, the only ballots that may be examined by hand are those that were deemed to not have a vote on them (undervote) or a vote for too many candidates (overvote).
In short, it is essentially impossible for a manual recount to occur, and when it does it will leave well over 98% of the ballots unexamined. I'd say that's a pretty good attempt at banning manual recounts.
The Florida election board made a rule saying that there would be no recounts in districts using paperless voting systems because there were no ballots to count in a recount. Districts that used systems that produced paper ballots would still be subject to recounts.
That rule was thrown out by the Florida court as a violation of state law that requires a manual recount be possible and required the paperless systems to produce some way for a recount to be possible.
Until, of course, the state-level decision was overturned by the 11th Circuit Court, allowing the
No, I mean "thousands."
OK, you're getting closer. You've found an article that's within one order of magnitude of your current claims. Kind of.
As in, 15,000 with problems, and at least 1,500 so far that are likely fraud.
Impressive. Fifteen words and yet you're still so off. It looks ike ACORN employees tried to break the law in a few cases (and are rightfully paying the price) ... but ... c'mon. Let's read this together:
Let's review: there are 1,500 potentially fraudulent registration cards that have been turned in (and the last time I checked, "potentially" did not mean "likely"); and of the ones with potential problems, it's uncertain how many actually have problems and of those that do have problems, which ones came from ACORN. Granted, that's 1,500 more potentially fraudulent registration cards than the BOE should have to deal with, but I'm sure the people who tried to pull a fast one will be properly transferred from dealing with the Board of Elections to the Board of Corrections.
As for the 15,000 ... dude, that number wasn't even in the news article. Did you get that number with the help of your proctologist?
-jdm
I just finished watching the documentary. They were so focused on saying "fraud could happen" that they ignored that incompetence already seems to have occurred.
Source code was only up for a few seconds, but it used ASP to connect to an MS Access database! Now, seeing as I'm biased because I hate both of those products, I don't have a very high set of expectations for the developer's abilities.
From what I can gather from the short technical descriptions, it appears that Diebold doesn't understand that security encompasses every step of the process. And from what little security they demonstrated, it appeared to be snake oil at best. They are obviously a company whose product is controlled by business people, not scientists/engineers.
I don't think I would trust Diebold to count pebbles, let alone run a democracy.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
I really don't get it.
/confused
A voting machine is pretty simple, is nobody else allowed to bid for the contract? After so many cockups it seems to me like Diebold should be out of business by now but they keep on coming back like some sort of undead thing.
Are the board of directors giving their daughters to the Bush family for consumption or something?
No sig today...
In cases where counties have demanded paper trails Diebold has fought them tooth and nail, even suing to have their machines re-certifed after being decertified - rather than complying with the security requirements set forth (CA). They have also threatened to renege on other portions of their contract if counties or states passed laws requiring the machines to have paper trails. Doesn't exactly say much for democracy when if you're lucky enough to have a state or local legislature that actually DOES something, but a company can essentially veto legislation. And states/locals DO NOT have the kind of funds available to blow tens of millions on Diebold and then chalk it up as a loss when they found out the product was faulty after-the-fact.
that's right, it doesn't matter if the voting machines work correctly or not - america will re-elect GWB anyways...
why? simple: there will be another terror-threat from osama in the week of the election - the same thing happened last time, so this might not be enough - so then there will be another act of terror (remember my words)...
people will be afraid and when they are afraid, they love the war against iraq, they give up their freedom voluntarily - yes, george, protect us - we'll let you spy on us 24/7 if neccessary... and kill all those bastards over there, so they can't harm us anymore...
just remember: the bin-laden family is still good friends and business partners with the bush family
same thing with that sheik, that paied 100.000$ to Mohamed Atta in the week before 9/11/2001...
the bin-laden family, the bush family and al-quaeda get rich from the war against iraq, because they hold many shares of the weapon indudstry... war puts lots of tax money in GWBs pocket! remember that whenever you hear which country "is about to develop an A-Bomb" next...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
One major problem I can see thats led us to this Diebold mess is that we seem to feel a ned to modernize the election process and to computerize it to bring it, somehow, into the digital age. Electronic voting machines are the wrong way forward, for many reasons, but the main way I want to see American elections modernize is one thing: Get rid of the Electoral College.
There have been three Presidents in american history that have been elected without the popular vote through exploiting the electoral college system (With the 2000 election being one of them) and any look at the media blitz during an American presidential election will show you that 90% of attention has become focused on particular "swing states," which by virtue of being unpredictable demographically recieve the bulk of attention from politicians and analysts. The remainder of the US population are virtually written off, as they reside in states where one can predict a result based on pure party lines. Thus the concerns, grievances or issues of non-'swing-states' are more or less unimportant to them.
This was an old system that was necessary in the USA's early days when communication was slow, but in the modern era, it's something that should be discarded, completely done away with in favor of a nationwide popular vote. Why won't this happen? Because it would require a constitutional amendment, which requires most of the politicians' approval. Thing is, every politician in office today remains so thanks to their ability to use/manipulate/exploit/master the democratic systems we have in place, and it would be contrary to their own personal interests to make the country better by making this change. A presidential candidate doesn't want to have to think about 50 states in an election year (though he or she should) so it suits them to only have to deal with 4 or 5 swing states.
Ultimately, it's my view that Diebold is just one facet of a very broken election system (at least a national election system, local and congressional elections have their own issues, just ask Tom Delay) which won't be fixed because those that can fix it are the ones benefiting from it being broken.
Yup...
>Unfortunately, as both the NYT and Washington Post report, the documentary itself is a stinker. They both claim it does little to present actual problems, showing instead unfeasible hacks that admittedly would never work, and contenting itself to merely cast doubt over the voting machines rather than providing any solid evidence. That's not what the articles said at all! Everyone pls go read the FA's. They say the show is undramatic, showing lots of lines of computer code, not terribly visually compelling to the average Bubba. And they don't "prove" there was or will be fraud, just that it's very very very possible, and they do it several different ways, on camera. Nobody can at this late date "prove" that fraud occurred or will.
Seems reasonable, no?
For those of us who don't have HBO, anyone have a torrent/link/YouTube/whatever?
Chris Knight is my hero.
And if the same error happened to throw the wrong numbers the other way? Would we even know about it? I'm going to say no: the only ones you'll hear about are glitches that appear as glaringly against the "expected" demographics. But if a heavily Democratic precint had an error throwing a few hundred extra votes to Kerry, would anyone notice? Would a journalist that did notice even say anything?
Regardless, this is why I'd prefer voting machines with a companion paper trail (receipt-style - one for the voter, and one to be secured after review by the voter). I'm annoyed that this doesn't seem like the only solution to everyone.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
And states/locals DO NOT have the kind of funds available to blow tens of millions on Diebold and then chalk it up as a loss when they found out the product was faulty after-the-fact.
In exactly the same way that those entities don't have the money to rebuild a $10M highway bridge that it turns out was illconcieved and should have had an extra lane going each way. Or unwisely purchased police car radios. Or insanely underpowered muncipal office computer networks. This just goes to contracting competence - and many suppliers (who are usually working on very small margins in order to win any such contract) are definitely going to bitch about having to re-deliver what they've alread delivered. The solution is more competent procurement, and better selection of technology by the people that will be using it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
For those interested in a good discussion of the whole problem, there is an excellent article in the latest ACM Queue magazine (November 2006,Vol 4 No 9) entitled "A Conversation with Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann". These are both experts in the field, and have a good discussion of the total picture. Highly recommended -- but I don't believe it's on the ACM website yet (http://www.acmqueue.org/).
Source code is 100% open to find exploits and bugs, when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number. That'd allow for everyone to do their own count if they wanted.
Totally defeats the purpose of a truly secret ballot.
In a secret ballot there should be no way to tally a vote with a person
even for the person itself. A ticket number could be used to prove/disprove
who someone voted for which is contrary to secret ballot.
You cannot bribe/threaten someone to vote one way or the other
if there is no way for you to verify it - this must be preserved.
Saying that the election officials shouldn't have hired these crooks/incompetents doesn't mean that these people aren't repsonsible for being crooks/incompetents. It just means that there's more than one group to blame! I agree with ScentCone that we shouldn't give our election officials an easy out by just blaming Diebold. But that doesn't mean that blaming Diebold is inappropriate!
This isn't an either/or.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Jo: I object!
Judge: Overruled!
Jo: I STRENUOUSLY object!
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
"The Neocon executive leadership in the US are criminals, their actions undermine the tenets of Democracy, and they need to be reigned in, now (as in arraignment)."
When referred to as a concept or process, "democracy" generally uses a lower case "d". Generally an upper case "D" is used when referring to the political party - capitalizing a proper noun. So the proper reading of your statement would be:
"The Neocon executive leadership in the US are criminals, their actions undermine the tenets of Democrats, and they need to be reigned in, now (as in arraignment)."
Which probably better reflects the thinking of the leadership of taht party.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I'd prefer voting machines with a companion paper trail (receipt-style - one for the voter, and one to be secured after review by the voter).
It cannot be said enough - voters must not get a receipt of their vote that they leave with. The machine can print two if you like, one visible through glass and visually verified then fed into the machine's ballot box, and another printed out that the voter can hold and verify, but then that handled paper vote is also deposited in a secure ballot box before they leave. ANY time the voter leaves with some official piece of paper that proves how they voted, you open up the possibility of people buying votes. It doesn't mean that they don't try to now, but if it can't be proven which way you voted then it dissuades a whole host of vote-buying and vote-bullying scenarios. I have never heard a credible argument that demonstrates a voter-held receipt could NOT be used in such a way.
At some point we have to trust the process. In the above scenario I outlined we would now have (1) the electronic count, (2) the machine ballet box paper count, and (3) the voter-handled ballet box count. At that point it's about as redundant as you can get without making things overly complicated. Although I admit I am totally open to well thought out ideas that are more secure/verifiable/simpler if they are presented.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Voting is run by the localities, not the federal government. The feds have no say in what contracts Diebold will get. This is a good thing. It makes our election process a mess of different technologies, with small groups of non technical people choosing voting platforms, but it does keep control of the overall process out of the hands of any single organization.
Now, I completely and totally agree that people working on their own inside Diebold or in the polling locations could influence the vote. This shouldn't be possible, but as we've seen repeatedly, the machines suck.
Conspiracies only work when the number of people involved is one or two. As soon as more than that are required, it falls apart quickly.
It cannot be said enough - voters must not get a receipt of their vote that they leave with.
I suppose it never occurred to me that there would be substantial enough "market" pressure to drive the need for a voter to present a receipt showing how they voted before getting paid. In essence, I figure that someone so slimy as to take money in order to vote a certain way probably doesn't much in the way of principles that would cause them to then vote another way once they're in the polling booth. Further, any vote buying scheme that involves after-the-fact transactions is just so screaming for a set-up and bust by law enforcement that I don't think most people would bother.
Of course, that being said, I wouldn't have expected get-out-the-vote activists claiming to back candidates on the basis of their integrity (etc) to submit thousands of obviously fake voter registrations, either, but that's happening as we speak. So, I guess I shouldn't assume anything about what people will and won't do! I agree that you have to build a trustworthy system, and then actually trust it. How trustworthy the current system is is certanly open for debate - and how eager some people are to create an atmosphere of distrust where none is really needed, specifically because of how it allows them to whip up conspiracy theories for a certain audience, is, too. Some of each, I'd say.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Only a moron or someone looking to game the system would find the current faith-based voting machines to be adequate. When I cast my ballot, I have no idea if the vote is registered correctly, I have no idea if the correct vote tallies are sent to the state, and I have no recourse of possibility for a recount if the totals seem strange - as they did in 2004.
The problems that computers are good as solving in the voting booth are the problems associated with producing clear, understandable ballot choices that are accessible to everyone. Computers are good at this because they now have nice, bright, colorful screens with plenty of room for wide names, multiple candidates etc. Also, computers can offer magnified screens, and audio output for people with hearing and vision problems. Finally, computers can print out a perfectly legible ballot with no hanging chads or overvoting.
That, in my opinion, should be the extent of the role of the voting computer. The voting computer should produce a ballot that is human and machine readable. That is to say, the ballot should say on line 1 - President: John Smith with the "A" bubble filled in, on line 2, Senator: Sally Jane with the "C" bubble filled in, etc. etc.
The ballots should then be run through an optical scanner and also be hand-counted by an election board. When the two counts are within statistical insignificance, the result should be phoned in as well as sent in electronically by the optical scanner machine.
If we followed this procedure, the person voting should not be confused at the ballot box, there should be no hanging chads, etc. The voter can look at their ballot once cast and see that they voted for whom they intended to vote. Their ballot would be ran through an optical scanner for immediate feedback, yet checked by a human count. The official results would be sent by two separate vectors to reduce the possibility of false tallies being delivered and there would be no step that would be susceptible to hackers or people deliberately altering the machines. In addition, if there were questions about the totals, we could actually reform a recount.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
So insightful Republican and Democratic posts get modded up, but so do the Democratic trolls and idiots. There is often a decent argument with both sides being presented here. It's just that the majority of readers here lean Democratic and often promote trolls that lean that way. (Mostly for comedic value, from my observations.)
And, just to clarify, intelligent people don't blindly side with one party over another. That's something that people incapable of critical thought must rely on. And unfortunately, there are a whole lot of those people on Slashdot as well. (Democrat, Republican, Pirate Party, or whatever.)
The fact that Diebold is asking them to stop speaks volumes. If the documentary is libel then Diebold has legal options to force them to stop showing it. The fact that they aren't using the courts means Diebold can't prove the allegations are untrue.
I find being offended by me offensive.
You idiot.
That doesn't have anything to do with voting fraud. You pay people per-registration, guess what? Some fuckers make up registrations. Others do it slipshod.
No one is alleged to have voted or be planning to vote with any false registrations. No votes at all were made.
And, yes, it keeps happening, which shows that paying people for registering voters without any verification is a fundamentally stupid idea.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
so... why does this CNN story about the NORC recount say:
The story goes on to say that under the two main possible scenarios -- the Florida Supreme Court ruling being upheld rather than struck down by the US Supreme Court, and the original Gore-requested four-county recount -- Bush would have come out on top.
Mainly you do not want to allow the buying of votes
Why not? How would the direct buying of votes be any different from politics as usual?
For example, when you hear a Republican candidate talk of lowering taxes, isn't this the same thing? - elect them, and you'll have more money in your wallet.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The article opens with:
Further in is what you're looking for:
But it goes on to say that all those 5,277 votes were deemed invalid by any interpretation of existing Florida state law. It seems your statement "That recount used six possible criteria for spoiled ballots and found that Al Gore won the state under all six scenarios" is false. Now, I didn't read the article in its entirety. Care to point out what I'm missing?
Now, I still believe that enough of a majority of Americans wanted to vote for Kerry (or against Bush, like I did). But in many, many local precincts many voters were deemed ineligible or "discouraged" from voting. One common law I have a problem with: denying those with previous felony convictions the right to vote. I'd dead-set against giving convicts in jail the right to vote - but when they get out and have "paid their debt to society", then their right to vote should be restored. Unless, of course, the reason they went to jail in the first place was for election fraud...
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Force - by law - the database itself to accessible to independent verification software. Better yet - force, by law, again - for the vote accumulation software - the front end that the voters use, to be separate from the vote tabulation software - i.e. separate suppliers. And force it down to the precinct level. Diebold records the votes, ESS or heck, IBM even, tabulates the data. In the next precinct, vice versa. Then have multiple independent verifiers check the accuracy by tabulating the raw data on a county by county and state by state basis.
And for even better security, have the voter front-end system, the tabulator, and the verifier all publish SHA-1 or MD5 checksums to verify the database wasn't tampered with.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
You idiot.
Back at you!
No one is alleged to have voted or be planning to vote with any false registrations. No votes at all were made.
Come on, now: there is no other reason to register hundreds and hundreds of fake people than to walk up to that precinct's polling place (where you don't have to show ID!) and then vote. If, as in the cases like ACORN, you've got a handful of people creating registrations that will allow people to walk up and vote, you've got two outcomes: either they and their associates get to cast multiple votes, or they get to claim that they were cut from the lists, in a PR move to cast doubt on results. In the example cited above, and hundreds of others if you bother to look, you've got double-voters, dead voters, voters with non-existent SSNs, and so on. Do you really think that, year after year, people (who do nothing but deal with voting issues for their parties!) would continue to do this if there was no connection between creating bogus registrations and then actually using them?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I caught the last half of this show last night on the Canadian equivalent to HBO: Movie Central.
It was certainly worth watching, even if the issues where "dumbed down" for the average viewers. I also thought the protagonists in the film, Black Box Voting, to be annoying fundamentalist technophobes, even though they're probably right. Perhaps they personalities just rubbed me the wrong way...
The demonstration at the end of the film, where they more or less proved the hackability of diebold voting machines, was pretty cool to watch though...
With all due respect, adding paper trails or patching security holes is hardly a redeployment of a delivered product. One is an addition, and they would be well within their rights to charge FOR that very conceivable project, and the other is patching security flaws, which should be fully expected. Pulling out of an entire project b/c you are asked to add printers is not exactly my idea of a show-stopping request. Most contractors you'd think would be happy for the add-on sales.
But it you want to talk about misinterpreting statements, talk to the GP poster.
.... where, exactly?
... it just starts to look too odd to be incompetence (although there's healthy doses of that, too).
i agree that the GP poster shouldn't do it either. Doing so undermines his argument also.
re: the election profiling comment, i intended it as a joke. i just thought that thinking of it as election profiling was kind of funny.
And I wrote that I was 100% certain fraud had occurred
Well, you asserted that those things were evidence of fraud. Evidence is proof of an action occuring in a specific way. You cannot have evidence of fraud without a fraud occurring.
In short, it is essentially impossible for a manual recount to occur, and when it does it will leave well over 98% of the ballots unexamined. I'd say that's a pretty good attempt at banning manual recounts.
I may be wrong about this, but I believe those rules have been in place since before the 2000 election. I expect the intent behind the rules is to make it easier and faster to do recounts by only dealing with the ballots that are in dispute, but I agree that the implementation does not appear to be a very good one. I don't think the specific intent was to make it impossible to do manual recounts, it's just a poorly designed process.
Until, of course, the state-level decision was overturned by the 11th Circuit Court, allowing the paperless systems to go un-audited and un-examined in the event of a contested and close election.
that is not what the 11th Circuit Court did. Originally, the district court dismissed the claims because Congressman Wexler had file the case in State court as well and the District court deferred to the State court case. This case was resurrected and ultimately the 11th Circuit court said the state's need to be able to do a recount was more important than the need for the recount process to be identical across different types of machines and that the differences in the mechanics did not necessitate a violation of due process and equal protection with regard to the voters.
It didnt say paperless systems can go unaudited or unexamined. Doing so would be a violation of state law in Florida. What it did say was that the recount procedure for a paperless system doesnt have to be the same recount procedure as that for an optical scan system.
As far as I know (and i dont have time to try to find out because i'm at work), the state case could still determine that the paperless systems violate state law.
From the description of what the recount system is for the paperless systems, and what the law in Florida requires, I think it has a decent shot of succeeding. I'm not a lawyer or judge, though, so my opinion is probably not informed enough to be relied upon.
I'd like to believe that, but it's getting harder and harder the more obstacles that Florida throws in the way of verified voting. Given their repeated rejection of ballot-marking devices for the disabled to actually taking citizens to court for attempting to get a voter-verified paper ballot resolution passed in Sarasota
I'm still hesitant to take that as a conspiracy. I've seen too many situations where people make bad decisions and then go far out of their way covering it up, just to avoid admitting to a mistake. This looks to me like more of the same. The incompetent people are deathly afraid someone will discover their incompetence and fight anything that might threaten their positions.
That isnt to say that it's not a bad situation. I absolutely agree that things need to change and people need to be fired, but they need to be fired for beind idiots, not for being part of a vast right wing conspiracy.
by the way, i appreciate that your response was reasoned. it's nice, especially on slashdot, to see that people can still have a reasoned disagreement without it devolving into name calling and character assassination. Now if we could only replicate that in the campaign process, we might be able to find a decent candidate.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Amazing. George W. Bush is the most disrespected person on the planet! I'll add it to my article: Bush Comedy and Tragedy.
Have a machine on the way out that lets you print out whatever receipt(s) you want. One to give to your boss so you don't get fired, one to give to your priest so you don't get excommunicated, and one to give to your girlfriend so she'll . . .
Anyway, here's the actual tallies from the NORC recount.
-PREVAILING STANDARD: County election officials told Florida journalists how they would define votes
if required to do a recount and in this scenario the majority standard was imposed statewide. In
punch-card counties, ballots with at least one corner of a chad detached counted as votes. In optical
scan counties, where voters are required to fill in blanks on a paper ballot - like on a standardized
test - ballots with any affirmative marks counted. That means a vote counted even if the oval was not
completely filled in or a candidate's name was circled or underlined; so did ballots on which a voter
correctly filled in the oval and also wrote the same candidate's name in the space for write-ins.
Result: Gore ahead by 60 votes.
-TWO-CORNER STANDARD: At least two corners of a chad must be detached to count as a vote, a position
that had been argued, at times, by Bush supporters. Same as prevailing standard for optical scan
ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 105 votes.
-MOST INCLUSIVE: Ballots with dimpled chads count as votes, an argument often made by Gore supporters.
Same as prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 107 votes.
-LEAST INCLUSIVE: Only cleanly punched chads count as valid votes. For optical scan, only fully filled
ovals and those ballots on which a voter filled in the oval and wrote in the candidate's name, too.
Result: Gore ahead by 115 votes.
-COUNTY-by-COUNTY: Drawn from the county election officials. It accepts results from Broward and
Volusia counties because those counties completed hand counts that were included in state-certified
election totals. For those counties that said they would not count overvotes, relies on prevailing
standard.
Result: Gore ahead by 171 votes.
-PALM BEACH STANDARD: Based on a standard Palm Beach election officials briefly used, this counts
dimpled chads as valid votes if a pattern of dimpled chads exists elsewhere on the same ballot. Same as
prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 42 votes.
Here's some media reaction from the time:
A close examination of the ballots suggests that more Floridians attempted to choose
Gore over Bush.
-- Chicago Tribune
Gore would have won most recount scenarios that included "overvotes," ballots that
showed votes for more than one candidate. Democrats long have contended that a plurality of Florida voters intended to cast
their ballots for Gore but that thousands spoiled their votes because of confusing instructions, badly
designed ballots or other obstacles. The study adds evidence to bolster that case.
-- LA Times
One of the most compelling questions since the election has been: Who would have won
if all the uncounted ballots were hand-counted using the same standards? If that had happened using the counting methods most widely used in the state, the
study shows, Bush would have gotten an extra 3,607 votes, Gore an extra 4,204 -- giving Gore the state
by a scant 60-vote margin.
-- Orlando Sentinel
But if Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots,
or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of
uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the
Now, that was one of the six standards used in the NORC recount. CNN didn't mention the other five in that article, but they all had the same result: Gore wins.
No, the "proper" reading of MY STATEMENT (insomuch as one might be able to define a proper way to read something...???) is exactly as a I wrote it, highlighting the concept of democracy with a capital D because I wanted to. It's important.
You don't get to just twist concepts however you want and get away with it. This administration has destroyed democracy in the U.S. (and I'm using your little "d" here, so there is no "improper" reading of what I mean here.) The facts are obvious.
Strangely even your twisting away from the uncomfortable reality of the current administration is wrong. The Democratic Party has most of the same underlying tenets as the Republicans: They want to collect money and power and control their political constituents to vote together against the other party. same same, just different name.
And on related note, it is not random that the "Democratic" party and democracy come from the same word root. There are core beleifs driving the political left that align with democracy much moreso that the underlying themes in the political right.
Common misconception.
Computers weren't designed to do stuff people can't do, they were designed to cut down on the number of skilled people needed by doing it faster.
So, if you use computers to count ballots I can compromise one programmer and throw the election without a trace (true - read up on it!) but if you use people to do the counting the sheer number of ballots pushes the number of people I have to suborn in order to throw a single election into impractical numbers, making it nearly certain that determined investigators would catch me.
Because large elections are still being held all over the world without computers, there are strong, highly evolved methods of doing so, and there are willing volunteers to man the necessary positions, so computers simply aren't needed.
Make sense?
Come on, now: there is no other reason to register hundreds and hundreds of fake people than to walk up to that precinct's polling place (where you don't have to show ID!) and then vote.
Did you not actually read the actual post I made? There's a perfectly 'good', or at least non-rigging-an-election reason, for that.
They got paid for each registration.
And, as was pointed out, the actual number of known invalid registrations by that group is unknown. You're just assuming that there are large numbers of invalid ones, and that the invalid ones came from ACORN, as opposed to a few invalid ones from ACORN and a bunch of really sloppy ones that could have come from anyone.
Which the examples, incidentally, bear out. You don't fill out a fake voter registration form as a 16-year old, because, duh, that's not going to make it past the person typing the info in. Nor do you forge forms from people who already registered. (Leaving aside the question of how you'd even manage to know their information, that wouldn't accomplish anything anyway.)
If, however, you're shoving forms at everyone instead of, you know, actually doing the slightest amount of work to weed out people who can't vote and people who have registered aready, that's the kind of crap you'll end up with. This is why paying people per forms-turn-in, vs. actual registration, is stupid.
That's not to say, if they were actually forging voter registrations, instead of just being sloppy, they shouldn't be punished for it. Hell, if an organization show a constant pattern of turning in clearly stupid registrations, like from 16-year olds and people who answered 'No' to 'are you a citizen?', they should have their right to register voters completely taken away. (That is, the right to collect forms. Everyone, IIRC, has the right to distribute them.)
But an assertation that ACORN is some sort of 'voting fraud machine' is completely without any sort of evidence.
Incidentally, your link is lying by implication about the one case I know of. While the Kansas City Star did say there were 300 people who could have voted twice, they used 'could' meaning 'it was possible for them to', as in, they were registered in two locations or twice in the same one, because the state screwed up and didn't remove older registrations. None of them actually did voted twice, and it wasn't any sort of fraud.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Come on now, if, IF! Are you really that dense? Why is it so hard for some to understand the importance of the election process being trustworthy? In your glee that your preferred pilferer is in power can you not wrap your mind around what the consequences of wholesale subversion could be?
ie: Quit frickin' whinin', up against the wall you traitorous wuss!
Look I know it's poor form to bitch about mods, but "Funny"? What the hell is funny about the post folks? Maybe I am dense myself but I don't get the joke. Unless it is a sick type of funny like the "hire the handicapped their fun to watch" line? I think the poster is serious, and that's, well, it's just pitiful, and you folks should be ashamed for finding humor in it. ;)
sheezzzz MatthewWe really need a new category for an insightful exposition of something that should be obvious.