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Netcraft Shows Smartech Running Ohio Election Servers
goombah99 writes "Netcraft is showing that an event happened in the Ohio 2004 election that is difficult to explain. The Secretary of State's website, which handles election reporting, normally is directed to an Ohio-based IP address hosted by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp. According to the American Registry on Internet Numbers, Smartech's block of IP addresses 64.203.96.0 – 64.203.111.255 encompasses the entire range of addresses owned by the Republican National Committee. Smartech hosted the recently notorious gbw43.com domain used from the White House in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act, from which thousands of White House emails vanished." Update: 04/25 01:24 GMT by KD : ePluribus Media published a piece called Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again on election eve 2006, when a similar DNS switch to Smartech occurred. They have been investigating the larger story of IT on Capitol Hill and elsewhere for two years.
Your own submission answers your question.
Nothing "changed" or was "transferred". http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ is a special web site in operation for elections. Otherwise, it points to http://www.sos.state.oh.us/ as it does now. It appears that the State of Ohio contracted with SmartTech for hosting, processing, and dissemination of the election results via the special elections web site, when it is in operation.
That probably won't be a good enough answer for people, though. Regardless, it appears that SmartTech has obvious ties to the Republican Party, and hosts many sites for various Republican political interests. The Secretary of State of Ohio is a partisan political position. This doesn't mean there aren't questions that can be raised or points to be debated.
The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.
Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."
It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
This doesn't even pass the smell test.
As the Democrats' own statistician, Jasjeet Sekhon, who coauthored their 2004 post-election report said:
I don't think there is anything especially nefarious about a state agency and the RNC contracting for hosting with the same company. Big deal. They probably both buy stuff from Wal-Mart too. I think somebody with an axe to grind is leaping to a conclusion that simply is not merited by the evidence given here.
If you really want to do something, get a "no consecutive terms on Capitol Hill" law enacted in your own state. Make them come home and live under the laws they passed for the past two to six years while holding an elected office. Eliminate their special pension plans, forcing them to live under the same Social Security and Medicare plan they force everyone else to live under.
Change in the way our government works will not occur until the people wise up and realize they're being strung along with lots of lip service and "feel good" knee-jerk reaction laws.
I have no plans to hold my breath waiting for that change, however.
OCO is Loco
Personally, anyone found to be a participant in voter fraud should be barred for life from voting.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
think of an explanation.
On election day, the people who run the SOS's DNS point election.sos.state.oh.us to a contractor who has contracted to provide "real time" updates from election data, something the SOS's staff is not equipped to do.
That vendor markets hosting services to political and government entities. It unwisely assigns a governmental web site from the very next block of addresses that are given to a political client, and unfortunately that block of addresses has become implicated in a serious scandal. Note the address is not in the RNC owned block (contrary to the article's title).
Now there are a gazillion possible ethical temptations that marketing yourself to political and government entities entails. So contracts let to such companies should be looked at very closely. But this is no smoking gun; or if there is smoke, it is more likely to involve improper contract selection than anything else.
So, it bears looking into, but is nothing to get excited about yet.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Just because the other side isn't following the rules set by the Geneva Conventions doesn't mean we are freed from the responsibilities of following them. I'm pretty sure we're bound by them regardless of the antics of our enemies. I'll have to do some research to back this up, but I'm willing to bet there is no clause that waives your responsibilities to follow GC under certain circumstances.
I've done stat analysis too. I concur with you that accusations based on statistical about what happened in florida don't seem to be strongly supported. That is to say the statistics are not conclusive. But I've also follwed the ohio reports pretty closely too. Some of the reports are incorrect. But some can't be so easily debunked. The strongest cases indicate that shoddy voting equipment created long lines that detered voters in selected precincts. It's also now certain that the recounts were rigged (they precounted then selected the precincts without problems for the official counts. And there are precints where the votes and voters don't add up. You always expect some of that so one can never really put a finger on if there was too much or too little. All very statistically nebulous. and hence an opportunity to tilt things and hide in the noise.
This is why getting the results early and having the ability to delay posting them enlarges the opportunity for dirty tricks. For example here's a sort of maxwell's deamon way to rig an eleciton completely legally. If you look at the early returns you will see lots of mistakes. Some will go in your favor some will go against you. If you selectively inquire with precinct judges only on the cases where the votes go against you, you can make gains. Indeed both parties routinely do this after the elections so that's not even science fiction. But now suppose your party, and only your party, is magically granted the power to do this on election night itself. Getting totals "fixed" is a lot easier when things are in flux. a simple phone call can say "Hey that can't be right, read those numbers again" will get you an updated total. After the election is done getting changes is much harder. Hence eraly knowledge helps. Running the reporting site would be a windfall.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The unemployment rate itself means nothing if the income is not stated for the employment.- 02-23-fed-incomes_x.htm
n g-and-investing-what-is-a-stock-market-index/
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2006
The statements about the stock market are meaningless without knowing where the indexes come from, how they are derived, and most importantly: using multiple specific indexes centered around economic health stock indicators.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/04/13/savi
Gas prices are around $3.20/Gal here and have been going up. It is getting to the point that it is no longer news worthy to report on the astronomic gas prices because they are becomming a standard. With the major gas companies all reporting record profits and bonuses for the upper management, there is a disconnect between the welfare of the people and the inherrant corporate goals of making a profit for such a vital infrastructure as gasoline. I hope I'm not alone in thinking that some services should be regulated by the government. If only to limit the maximum percentage of personal profit from sales of a vital infrastructure.
If we don't need to push alternative fuel souorces right now with aggressive legislation, then we should have the resources to keep our country running without sending additional billions overseas for oil. Paying the areas of the world that supposedly harbor terrorists. They have an economy just like ours, if there is an influx of money in a region then they prosper. "Trickle down" to the enemy is a bad way to support our troops. This government has reversed and hobbled legislation that could have kept us in the front running technology to become independant. No specific technology will help us now. It must be a multifacited environmental/political/economic push to be better at providing and distributing what we consume. Trash, electricity, and commuting fuel all need to be addressed a whole lot better than they are now. The political grandstanding and photo ops don't cut it. Real action and real commitment from the people in charge (automakers and elected officials) will keep this country a world power, or let it fall into mockery on the world stage, their actions will lead us, and we are responsible for our complicity.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
In your world,
You don't think the tax revenue from the capitol gains cut and the roth IRA conversion which was temporary had anything to do with this do you?
And I'm wondering about,
You don't think this had anything to do with the oil embargo do you? Or could it be the government price controls that lead people to believe tankers were waiting just outside US waters waiting on the government to increase the market cap?
Could this be because Reagan ended up outspending the russians and with his famous MAD scenario, took the only real leverage the Russians had off the table?
Could this pass be also because Clinton started the spying on the Internet and the programs only matured under Bush? Green lantern?
well, To be truthful, I don't have any questions here, just some clarifications. Leaking of wilson's name or more precisely his wife, PLame was done by Richard Armatage, a democrat and the special council knew this from the very beginning of his investigation. But more importantly, The land deal was a direct result of Carters policy and the collapse of the savings and loans along with the loss of farms too.
Carter tried to improve the economy by letting the banks invest directly in real estate were before all they could do is back a loan and broker the sale of a mortgage. When the banks dumped all their money into it, it drove real estate prices through the roof and eventually caused the bottom to fall out of the market once the prices for land became so high, a normal person couldn't afford it anymore. This forced the banks to scramble for funds to operate and they started foreclosing on mortgages in an attempt to bring cash flow into the system. Eventually this backfired and caused the loan collapse and the rose law firm was right in the middle of it with the Whitewater land speculation.
But because of this, Farmers were seeing land prices go from $25 -$100 an acre to over $2500 and acre and they took loans out to buy modernized farm equipment with the expectations that the prices would continue to rise and with the increased productivity of the new equipment they thought they could sell a few acres and afford the payments. once the banks dropped and the bottom fell forcing the bailouts, these farmers now owned a huge sum that they couldn't plant themselves out of and their land values dropped so much that selling the farm wouldn't even cover it.
This leads us into the farm crisis were family farms were being foreclosed to cover the debts of the banks and eventually the savings and loan bailout. The good thing about this was the instillation of the FDIC insurance and limits to the amounts of money that can be loaned out with a required amount to be placed in reserve.
Unfortunately, All this good stuff could have been avoided with a little more government oversight and some limits imposed on the banks concerning the investment properties. IT should have works on paper but failed miserably in practice. If you are old enough to remember how life was back then, you will know that it is much better today is and how wrong of a statement losing money on a failed
Gas is 2.87 a gallon nation-wide. It peaked at an average of about $3 per gallon last year and the year before. I'm unable to find good graphs with this previous year's data on them, but it looks like the peak was around $3 in today's dollars; I should remind you that we're not being embargoed, and it's still almost as bad as it was then. The media disbanded the Iraqi army? The media put incompetent partisan hacks in charge of the reconstruction effort? The media decided that torture was a great idea? "Kicking major ass" isn't a foreign policy goal, it's a movie tagline--and it's a stupid euphemism for "killing lots of people". Pretending to be the Golden Horde doesn't work when you're also pretending to be George Marshall. Don't blather on about how you're the armies of goodness and light when you also want to kill kill kill, and those corpses were probably Al Qaeda anyway.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"The top 10% of earners pay 70% of the taxes. If that isn't "sharing the wealth," then socialism is much nastier than I thought."
Fascinating, that 10% you're talking about also earns 95% of the countries wealth in a year! Meanwhile the 90% that earns 5% of the country's wealth each year is paying 30% of the taxes! Wow, what a burden that must be for the bottom 90%, paying 6 times the rate the top 10% does.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Yep, good old Reagan supplying Iran with illegal arms to make a political game of freeing the hostages. What a great man, proving that by Iran taking hostages, we will bend over backwards to give them whatever they want by negotiating with terrorists. Got to love revisionist history. I'll bet you blame the way Bush trashed the economy on Clinton somehow too! (all good neo-cons can trace every problem in the world back to Clinton in 3 steps or less)
P.S. shouldn't your alias be "Archie B" as in Bunker?
"But this one goes to 11!"
So, Reagen gets all the credit for "saving" the hostages immediately after assuming office, but Clinton gets all the blame for 9/11 over 9 months after he's gone from office?
"Could this be because Reagan ended up outspending the russians and with his famous MAD scenario, took the only real leverage the Russians had off the table?"
Its more likely the Soviet Union collapsed be because the Russians foolishly got bogged down in a decade long war in Afghanistan. A war that tore Russia apart from the inside. The scarred veterans returning from the horrors of Afghanistan were an integral part of the uprising against the Communist party that sent them there.
The only credit I'm willing to give Reagan in toppling the Soviet Union was the weapons he gave the Muhjadeen. As a cruel and ironic twist it turns out he was also helping build the Taliban and Al Qaeda at the same time. Reagan's arms build up had no clearly defined role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its main accomplishment was to enrich U.S. defense contractors. Most of the weapons he spent massive sums on were a joke, Star Wars never did anything worthwhile, his battleships were billion dollar artillery pieces that just diverted funds from more useful projects, and the B-2 and B-1B were a complete joke that are largely shunned to this day in favor of the B-52 which cost a fraction of the price.
I would give far more credit to Pope John Paul and Gorbachev for toppling the U.S.S.R than Reagan. They used peaceful persuasion, and accomplished a lot more, than squandering money on staggeringly expensive and largely ineffective weapons.
@de_machina