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House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
Spamicles writes "A vote is imminent for the bill that is a direct response to problems in the 2006 elections. This legislation would create a paper trail for elections, require a manual audit of every federal election, and open the source code of voting software in certain circumstances. The bill currently has 216 co-sponsors and is expected to be brought to the floor of the House and passed any day."
this is definitely a good thing.
Now if we could just get mandatory picture IDs for voting, we'd eliminate nearly all of the election rigging.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
From the Dub:
"We need to make sure that votes are counted accurately and safely. Bills like these only embolden our enemies. This bill will only erode the confidence the American people have in our democratic election system. If this bill were to become law, the lessons of 9-11 will have been forgotten. I vow to veto this bill."
At least, that's my guess.
I'm Canadian, and currently we use pen and paper ballots counted by hand. I'm not going to say our voting process is problem free, but it seems to have a lot less problems then what exists in the US system. Seems to me like fighting for OSS and paper trails in the voting process is the wrong battle, and that you should be fighting to go back to paper, hand counted votes. It's a lot more transparent to the voters that things are being messed with. With software and computers thrown into the mix, most voters have no idea how to verify that the voting is done in a reliable manner.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Some Congresscritters and/or their staff must be reading Slashdot. These are all things that more than one of us has suggested.
Now just one more thing, guys: make the entire system run on Linux or other F/OSS operating system. That will eliminate the use of viruses targeted at the easily-cracked Windows operating system from the McDonald's of operating system vendors (Microsoft).
My blog
So by "we" he means "my people", not "the American people".
Interesting
I'm not sure what to mod it though. It's obviously flame bait, but it is funny. Unfortunately, there is also a good chance it is true, which I guess would make it insightful.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
FTFA: Because of the shear number of cosponsors, the bill is expected to pass. /weep
Angry Network Admin
I've seen a number of sensible bills which seemed like a shoe-in, only to be held up, and eventually dropped. I'll believe it when I see it.
On the other hand, if it DOES make it through, then it will go some way to restoring my faith in the US political system. Not just because of the mechanism required by this bill, but the fact that the politicians actually passed it.
I don't doubt that the original author of this bill was well intentioned (there was so much to fix about HAVA, after all), but this bill is not the answer, and it's _not_ good. We don't want computers enshrined as the method of resolving or counting votes. The Canadian (and the Europeans, e.g., the Swiss) have it right. Paper ballots that are manually marked that _anyone_ can verify are the right approach. Slashdot is what got me involved in this issue originally, and it's thanks to the skepticism of computer professionals that we know how bad these systems are.
This bill is being called the "Patriot Act of Elections"...be sure to get all the facts before you decide it's a good thing, and I'm sure you'll decide it isn't. Here are two great resources to start with:
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/
http://www.bradblog.com/
(and in particular on the Brad Blog, check out Ellen Thiesen's analysis of problems with this and the Senate bill currently being worked on)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4678
Other things in the bill:
Prohibition of wireless networks for use in voting systems
Prohibition of voting systems connected to the Internet
Excludes the use of COTS hardware and software (what about embedded OSes?)
See the full HR-811 bill.
My blog
What is this, AOL?
Me too!!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I'll believe it when I see it. A nickel says if it passes in the House it'll die at the Senate. There's too many extremely evil people who want elections riggable, and want their machines used to do it.
I honestly won't be the least bit surprised to see some Congressfolk get up and talk about how this bill is a blow to democracy and shouldn't be allowed to pass...
This guy's the limit!
I would like to see voting machines built in such a way that they can not be easily opened & tampered with, I seen a video just the other day showing a couple of people getting in and changing some chips and closing the voting machine back up in less than a minute...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Like, three or four times.
The mass media controllers hand pick the candidates *they* want you to focus on,and yes I'll even label it a conspiracy and interference of a sort in the political process. Merely by increasing news coverage and declaring such and such candidate a "front runner" it becomes their self fulfilling prophecy. Words have meaning and advertising/brainwashing works to a great extent, notice how they describe candidates other than their version of the top runners.
We always have a lot of candidates, just a very few get the bulk of the press.
The current Republican party disconnect with Ron Paul is a clear example, he has a lot of grassroots support, yet very little national coverage and what he does get is artfully spun negative propaganda, whereas their globalist darlings like giuliani and now fred thompson get the bulk of the positive press. This is on purpose and this controlling the voters mindset is a long running "feature" of having our media controlled by a few people at the top. Their hand picked examples get the bulk of the news, so they turn around and can say "candidates x and y are the front runners, look how much news and interest there is!" Well, duh... These are artificially manufactured "top runner" candidates.
Want to change things, use the net and embarrass the mass media on their own news blogs and follow through no matter what once you actually get to the voting stage. Dump that lesser of the top two evils "vendor lockin" they always push, it's just plain harmful and results in the political situation you see today and what you have seen over the past generations.
I can not see ink as a solution. So we argue about whether that ink mark is dark enough or actually in the box, etc.
Your proposed 'solution' returns us to something we have already tried and found lacking.
Electronic ballots, with paper confirmation, using an open sourced software, is just as verifiable as your old fashinoned paper + ink, but is cheaper, quicker, and harder to 'stuff'. When you have a paper + ink ballot box, all you need do is throw out 1/2 the real ballots and stuff it full of fake ones. Electronics voting with paper ballots, means there are two records, so BOTH must be modified, and they must be modified 'synchronosly', giving us three times the chance to catch you (both records must show the winner you desire and they must match up exactly, including any time, location or other coded stamps placed on the paper and electronic records.)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Elections vote for you!
Seriously though, from the state that brought you the last two election debacles, you may be happy to learn that our legislature has already enacted its own law requiring machines with paper trails. While I believe this is a step in the right direction, some of our counties will be stuck paying for electronic systems that they will soon be prohibited from using. In the case of Miami-Dade County for instance, I believe they still owe about $25 million on their new machines that they won't be able to use after the 2008 primaries.
Anyone want to help me start a business selling voting machines? If they keep changing the laws, we can clean up!
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
how the hell did that happen oh yeah they were the ones it effected.
Why is everybody avoiding the real solution? Tampering with the electoral process should be considered high treason and be punishable by death. Might scare some people, no?
I've done my best (writing my congressman and senators) to derail this horrid bill. Unfortunately, like the amnesty bill, it appears to be a foregone conclusion.
Though it makes sense on the surface, the extra costs are - in my opinion - not worth the effort. I still don't see what the problem with old style ballots are. Also, we already do a 1% manual tally here in Los Angeles county. (With 5,000 precincts, that's not an easy task.) Add this new effort into the task of rolling out an election with Precinct Ballot Readers, TEV early voting systems, ballots in eight different languages, and an apathetic population who is sick of the PAC's driving everything and you have a total waste of money.
</soapbox>
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
There is absolutely ZERO evidence that there is significant or even measurable levels of vote fraud committed by voters. Of course there is lots of evidence that elections have been stolen by fraud on the election counting side of things.
-- QED
Comment removed based on user account deletion
where was this 4 years ago? I guess we didn't know how bad we'd need it until he got another term!
stuff |
If you must have a paper trail, you still need a way to protect voter privacy. After all, if you just have an adding machine type strip of paper, then knowing the order the voters went into the booth tells you exactly how they voted. That's not good!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
To fuck up elections based on paper ballots. Y'know mark an X in a box. You have to try really hard to make that fail.
But with the statement that "I can not see ink as a solution. So we argue about whether that ink mark is dark enough or actually in the box, etc." I see that you have that talent. You should apply to your local State Election Administration, they need your skills.
Deleted
One of the congresscritters in question is Rep. Rush Holt. Holt holds a Ph. D. in Physics and is, from what little I know, one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and honest members of congress. He's exactly the sort of person the /. audience should want in congress: a smart guy with technical expertise who likes to get the facts and apply them rationally.
And I can state for a fact that at least some of his staff are aware of and occasionally read Slashdot. BTW: I'm not personally affiliated with Holt in any way. I'm just a fan.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has written an analysis of this bill that is very useful, quick to read, and well... correct.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005308.php
I have been following the issue of election theft and computerized voting very closely for years, and I say that this bill is our best hope of fixing the elections system. It isn't perfect but compared to what we have now it is an incredible improvement. I'm also not claiming that this will fix any of the other ills of our political system, but this is a critical element to saving our democracy. PLEASE PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE call or write your representative and beg, plead, implore them to support this bill.
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
What does it do?
Requires voter verified paper ballots. The physical paper ballot is the official legal record of the vote instead of some bits in a Windoze PC.
Requires manual audits of 3-10% of randomly selected precincts. This is by far the most important part of the bill because this is the tool that can be used to detect fraud. Note, audits are currently extremely uncommon even in the cases of recounts or close elections. In many cases audits are impossible because the data needed is lost in the electronic counting process.
Would require release of source code of some portions of the voting software to certain people. Okay obviously this is a compromise between opening the source, trade secret concerns, and the practical fact that MS isn't gonna release the source to Windows or Access, which many of these systems are based upon. Still if Slashdot readers don't get that this is a step in the right direction then no one will.
-- QED
It's solving the wrong problem.
The most important requirement for any election system is universal comprehensibility. If voting systems use anything too complex to be understood by a school leaver with passing grades in all subjects, they're too complex full stop. Most people wouldn't be able to understand blueprints, schematics and source code listings even if it became mandatory to publish them. (But, of course, I'm not suggesting that they should be kept secret; subjugating the requirements of democracy to the whims and caprices of a corporation is beneath unthinkable.)
Pencil and paper fulfil the requirement for universal comprehensibility. There are only two failure modes; one of them (someone manages to identify a voter from their ballot paper) can be eliminated altogether and the other (a ballot paper is miscounted) can be minimised.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Will it really be Open Source, or will we just be able to see it and not play?
Or will only certain people get to see it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
While I think this issue is important, I personally haven't had the time to devote to really look at all the angles. I do know that this bill is supported by the EFF, computer scientist and e-voting critic Prof. Ed Felten and Ars Technica among a vast number of others. While the bill is by many accounts imperfect, the provisions for auditing and verification are a vast improvement on the current state of affairs, where we use black box machines and can have no confidence that our votes are tallied as they were cast. So I support the bill.
I think there's a reasonable argument to be had about whether we aren't better off just using paper (for reasons of transparency), but the point is that that argument can be had completely independantly of this bill. This bill clearly improves the current situation with electronic voting machines (DREs), and has no effect on whether or not you have to use DREs. From the EFF pages in support of H.R. 811:
Moving to defeat this bill because you oppose electronic voting is foolish. It is a situation the perfect being the enemy of the good. This is something activists on many issues fall prey to that keeps them from being effective.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Certainly there are problems with the legislative sausage making process, but if ever there were an area where we need some absolutes, it's the protection of our election. While this bill may improve the current state of affairs, the current state of affairs is so abominable that may not mean much.
Anything that further legitimizes the use of DREs in elections is a mistake in my opinion. A very likely outcome is that this flawed bill passes and come next session, you hear something akin to "you already got your reform bill, now shut up and vote on the machine we're giving you"...
If this bill passes then we're going to waste another few billion dollars buying more bad computer systems to run our elections and further alienate voters.
The whole process would be much simpler (and much, much, much cheaper) if we used precinct counted paper ballots, like many other first-world democracies do.
Luckily, we're still free to disagree!
If I can't get a piece of paper and then two weeks later check to see if my vote is the same as the one I cast then you can't trust voting machines.
One should not equivocate here. It either improves the situation or it doesn't. If it does (as I and the people/organizations I listed think) then it's better that it pass. If does not, then it's better that it does not pass. This bill mandates an actual paper record of each vote and a number of audits to check that electronic tallies correspond to the paper record (statistically). Regardless of any other arguments, I cannot see how one can claim this is not an improvement over a system in which machines record and tally the votes with software that could be recording anything and store your vote in a rewritable form which can easily be altered on a massive scale.
DREs are already in widespread use. What more legitimization do they need? I think it is unwise to pass up the chance meaningful (but, perhaps, incomplete) reform now based on the hypothetical scenario that it will make congress members more resistent to a hypothetical future bill pushing an idea with no demonsterable wide-spread support (even among the subset of people concerned with voting reform) and with little way to predict whether the politcal climate at the time this hypothetical future bill would be considered would be conducive to it's passage. That is a very bad bargain.
I agree that insistence on the basic right to vote is something we should not compromise. But what we're talking about here is a disagreement on what implementation will best ensure that right under practical circumstances among a group of people (those concerned with voting reform) who all believe in ensuring that people can be confident their vote was tallied as intended when the vote was cast.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
> The current Republican party disconnect with Ron Paul is a clear example, he has a lot of grassroots support, yet very little national coverage and what he does get is artfully spun negative propaganda, whereas their globalist darlings like Giuliani and now Fred Thompson get the bulk of the positive press.
Don't get me wrong; they really do a lot to dissuade serious contenders. But there *is* some serious disconnect between Republicans and Ron Paul because there are splits within the party. For example, I know about him from his own page, but there's still no way I could vote for him.
Granted, I'm more of an ex-Republican, but I can't in good conscience vote for someone who is a corporate whore. Seeing just how pervasive that is, among other things, is exactly why I consider myself an ex-Republican. Sure, you can justify it as "liberty" to do business or some crap like that, but I'd rather see liberty for people, and the $s that seem to pop into Libertarian eyes, blinding them to more important matters, utterly disgust me.
In other words, what I'm trying to say is that the media didn't make all of it up. There really are splits in the Republican party, ones that will be very important in the next election. And from everything I've seen, I seem to be a lot like those who are abandoning the Republican party right now.
So the media didn't invent that, at least: there really are (ex-?)Republican splinter groups who are pretty much disgusted with Ron Paul (not to mention certain other candidates).
I've been homeless! Who the hell are you to tell me that I shouldn't be able to vote? I was working a lot at the time(and wound up sleeping in the attic at work and in parking lots). I did pay taxes that year(although I wasn't making enough to pay income tax, since I was a tuition paying university student). Yes, there are homeless people who do not contribute. But there are people out there who are homeless who do work, who are just trying to make ends meet, and who probably contribute more (and consume less) than your average SUV driving tv watching normal.
Some places have housing markets that are behaving not exactly rational right now(mostly imho due to the ability of people to buy houses they cannot afford through mortages, inflating the market price of houses, coupled with the current architectural trend to create houses in suburbs with extremely low population density and exceptionally high transportation cost). Right now in my hometown(Regina, Canada) rental housing is being closed down wholesale(and rents rising at a proportional rate) to make way for people from Alberta to just buy up large amounts of houses, not to live in, but for speculative purposes. This means less housing for the people who could be living in houses, less supply, and higher prices. Higher prices that some just will not be able to afford, and they will be a) put into a telescoping amount of debt or b) out on their own, unless they freeze to death, which is likely.
Who is more deserving of the Vote; a homeless person who works, or a lazy video gamer who leeches off their parents? People on welfare/social assistance? The paralyzed and handicapped, but otherwise intelligent(an important question for the US, with the existance of 200,000 maimed soldiers, and their uranium-disfigured children)? What about people who don't own any property? Where do we draw the line?
Secondly, taking the vote away from homeless people turns the homeless into refugees, and the existance of refugees is a major global problem right now. You know, the kind of "real issue" that affects your community. We do not need to make more refugees, we need to help raise refugees out of their current status. The externalities that come from the mere existance of refugees(political instability, etc) weigh on all economies that are affected by them.
As for soup kitchens; it must be nice to know that you're never going to be that poor. Your job can dissapear, either due to automation or an odd business cycle swing and you will be left with Nothing. In fact it's my career goal and the career of probably many of us here to put as many people out of work as possible. This is what I will be doing for a living, assuming that I'm good enough, at some point. At that point the only thing that will keep you alive is the soup kitchens, the food banks, etc. You better pray that someone keeps them running, because when your job dissapears(and it will, it may be after you die, but it will), you will need it.
My only consolation is that you are probably a yank, and I don't live in the US, so I'm probably safe for the time being from the negative effects of this kind of thinking.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
New York State requires that if you would work a shift in which you will not have 2 hours before your shift, or 2 hours after your shift, in which to go to a polling station, your employer MUST give you the difference of the time off that day in order that you will have a full 2 hours to vote. Even if your boss is a prick, the state's attorney will have a field-day banging your employer for obstructing your right to vote and wrongful termination.
Trip to the library and a stamp
As such, your point about polls being held open longer really doesn't solve the problems I am talking about.
Of course not, nothing can solve this problem captain hyperbole! we need the UN to come in here and fix this so you don't have to even get out of bed to vote.
Nicely stated, N3WBI3, and it pretty much hits the nail on the head. In short, while sometimes a hassle, voting is everyone's responsibility and if you have to drag your kids with you and stand in line with them, then that's what you have to do (and you'll be teaching them the value of voting).
While nice, it's called closing the barn door after the horses run away.
The Goopers have been rigging elections for over a decade, and the GWB war profiteer administration has already succeeded in plundering the nation and hijacking the government. As it stands, it will already take at least 10 years to undo the damage the Goopers have done.
What we REALLY need is a little something called "accountability". Yeah, it's nice to fix the system, but people who violate the law need to go to prison.
Oh, and BTW, many studies have already shown how requiring IDs is a HUGE non-issue. What IS a huge vote rigging issue is absentee ballotting, which requires neither an ID or secrecy. At least polling "fraud" is limitted by how many polling stations one person will physically risk illegally voting at... which is a non-issue smoke screen created by the Goopers to cover up their vast amount of voting fraud. After all, if the Justice Dept and FBI are busing chasing a red herring, they can't investigate Goopers who destroy ballots and are actually rigging the vote counts, can they?
Goopers are the biggest threat to democracy since Germany's Nazi party. Kind of interesting how GWB's grandpappy financed Hitler... and how GWB's first business partner was Osama Bin Laden's brother... and how the guy who shot Reagan was the son of one of GHWB's business partners. It's like the whole world revolves around the Bush family.
> Unless... you weren't one of those who bought into the abortion/religious nonsense/values crap they spout to gain votes from those with imaginary friends were you?
Oooh, such a witty comeback. I must have left my brain at the door. What ever was I thinking, clearly my thousands of years of philosophical backing have been leveled by such a witty comeback. And it's not as though there's historical evidence, nor even modern day evidence that could possibly support my position. Nay, I clearly must surrender all of my intellect at the door.
I mean, clearly all religious positions are "anti-science" and atheistic naturalism is the one true path... one which I must never question too closely, must never ask pesky questions like exactly what sort. And surely I must never question that the scientific method is not just the most reliable, but the only method by which one can acquire knowledge. After all, who doesn't do double blind studies to determine if their mother loves them (and by "love" I mean if their mother's LQ, or love quotient, is greater than 100 on a properly normed statistical basis)? Nay, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" which is why I get to decide which evidence is extraordinary and which claims are, then match them up the way that makes the most sense to me.
And I certainly don't dare go along with the heathen examples of the Church Fathers in treating things like Genesis 1 as a parable. Nay, that invites certain heresy, because then people who score very low on reading comprehension tests might also say, "why aren't the genealogies also figurative?" I mean, the Bible is only one book, not 66 of them, derived from multiple sources over centuries, recorded by different people at different times in different genres of ancient writing, about which we know more than just about any other single collection of writing... right?
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, they finally did something useful in the Supreme Court, getting it 5/4 again (and hoping the moderates keep them from doing anything *too* stupid). And they weren't silly enough to buy the argument that you can deliver a baby through the birth canal, but you can't allow it to live afterwards.
But you'd be right to say that it totally backfired, overall. This damn war is killing far more than that would save. Oh, right, you only consider them people once they can insult you back, but at least you should agree that it's in the negative.
As for guns, I'm pretty much anti-death. So I don't like guns, sorry. Like "to promote the arts and sciences" I feel that the "well-regulated militia" rationale behind the law is being pretty much ignored. The good news, as far as you might be concerned, is that I don't see it as being prudent to try and disarm all the random gun nuts out there. I just don't see guns as a good thing. Period. And lest you're wondering, 'anti-death' means I also don't like the death penalty, nor war. I wonder, though... what do guns mean to you? Even though my mother was murdered in cold blood, I see no reason to carry one. Even though she was beaten to death with a hammer and wrench in our own house, I see no reason for a death penalty. But what do I know? Someone will probably assume that I didn't love her or something, even if I've spent over a decade trying to imagine how I might have saved her had I known what was going on, including every plausible weapon or tactic that could have been available to me. Like why I got that boomerang when I could once have bought the ninja stars. "But they're a weapon!" I was rebuffed, by the man who would later kill mom. Yes, it was dad.
If I were you, I'd worry less about guns. Worry more about surveillance. Knowledge, not might, is the more dangerous power and I loathe the way we have seen it expand without oversight or consideration in this administration. The best way to fight for freedom is never to have to. Alas, we're seeing that power pass into the hands of increasingly unregulated corporations, whi
Go back to the punch ballots and just require the chads to be removed to be a vaild ballot. Technology is not the answer here. Common sense is.
India uses paper ballots
Actually, India uses machines and has for several years now.
...have no major differences. In the US we have two wings of the Globalist party. It is a 1 party system. Full & Stop. The media pushes those candidates which support that notion, because at the top levels, the "media" is owned by a handful of globalist billionaires, and they give the orders.. If a candidate is pro wall street pirates, open unregulated US borders, offshoring/job jacking, interventionism in the middle east, etc-that's who "wins" for the most part the media popularity contests. The two wings of the Globalist party differ only in which of your pockets they want to pick first-your left or right pocket- and which of your personal freedoms -our supposed inalienable bill of rights- is higher on their list to restrict/eliminate/regulate/tax. "Left wing and right wing" is an obvious ruse to keep the grassroots political activist rabble amused and thinking their input will matter a whole lot. It matters *some* obviously, but not near as much as what gets decided at WTO, CFR, Bohemian Grove, Bilderberger, etc type meetings. That is where official policy is formed and decided on, then they have to sell it to the populace, and media manipulation is a heavily used tool for that purpose.
Historically the most obvious one in the media was the Hearst empire.
If you want some current examples of how this works, look at illegal immigration, a clear cut majority of both "left wing" and "right wing" people (by simply all polls I have seen everyplace) are opposed to amnesty and want the illegals slowed down to a stop and have the "normal" legal, lawful, safer and much more sane immigration continue, yet, the globaist party and their "front runners" keep trying to push amnesty under some other name through the congress. The phones ring off the hook at every congressmans office against it, but they'll keep trying until they get that passed. Look at the war, it hasn't stopped yet, despite a huge overwhelming opposition to it now, we are building permanent bases there, and the largest embassy in the world. Look at energy, the big oil companies keep making record profits, and the amount put towards alternative energy is a pittance compared to that. Mr. Environment, the so called "left" wing gore, a globaist multimillionaire, is just *now* putting solar panels at his house after suffering embarrassing press-yet it wasn't there until some blogs found out about his hypocritical stance. I mean, selling carbon credits from one of your companies to another is not an environmental issue, it's a typical globalist rich guy dodge worth of an enron. The R party grassroots is way against illegal immigration, but their so called "leaders" who are mainstream globalists are all in favor of the scamnesty bill to legalize them. The blue collar dems at the grassroots levels are all against offshoring and job-jacking, yet their leaders are always letting it just keep getting worse and worse and worse with no end in sight.
Any candidate labeled D or R who is against that stuff is invariably labled a "fringe" candidate, by every media empire out there, every newspaper, every major broadcaster does it, because those notions go against the high level globalist party long term goals. Here's another, outside of a few internet sites, where is the main stream media coverage of the north american union that is being forced on us by fiat. It ain't there, zip coverage for the most part and it has *profound*, I mean, large, big, gigantanormous implications for everyone in the US, Canada and Mexico. zip coverage for the most part. This is not a coincidence.
And so on, I could rant awhile on this subject, but following politics and the news closely for around half a century now it is pretty easy for me to see how it has gradually gotten both worse and more sophisticated in how they run this high level propaganda, and I haven't even touched on official governmental employees running the news with fake bloggers, forum posters, news "leaks" (WMD IN IRAQ! OMG! IT'S REAL!). Some of that stuff they have gotten bust
One of the big tricks used in Ohio in 2004 was that electronic voting machines are complex and temperamental, and if you don't ship quite enough parts to a precinct then they won't have as many voting machines working, so if you manage the demographics appropriately you can skew the vote. I think the documentary I saw was from Cincinnati, but it might have been Columbus. The urban mostly black precincts were averaging 1 to 2 hour lines to get in and vote because there weren't enough working voting machines if they could open at all, and the white suburban precincts didn't seem to have this problem. It was a rainy day, and most of the lines were outside because the polling places were jammed full, and many of the voters left because they had to go to work. Precinct workers (including the poll workers, the partisan observers, and at least one city council person) kept calling in to their election support departments and not getting responses, or getting promises but not getting parts. You'll remember that the Secretary of State for Ohio had promised to deliver the election for Bush...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks