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Ohio Sues Over Missing Electronic Votes
dstates writes "The Columbus Post Dispatch reports that the State of Ohio is suing Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold) over malfunctions in electronic voting machines. Election workers found that votes were 'dropped' in at least 11 counties when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers. The same voting machines are used nationwide. The company blames a conflict between their software and antivirus software for the problem and says that an advisory was issued on the subject. The Ohio lawsuit contends that the company made false representations and failed to live up to contractual obligations and seeks punitive damages."
If these machines affected the outcome of the election, perhaps it is the American people (and the people of Iraq) who should be seeking punitive damages from Diebold.
They were all for Bush, imagine that!
For fuck's sake, can we just use an open source solution or build a better one already? This should be OSS's moment to shine because amongst us there are the ideas, talent and skills to make a system that for all purposes is more secure, transparent and robust than what is currently on offer from Diebold or any other proprietary vendor.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Maybe a couple charges of treason should be thrown in as well. Electoral fraud. Coup coup d'état. Indecent exposure.
Like what? Getting a do-over for the last eight years?
Who was fuckwitted enough to think using Windows on voting machines was a good idea? Nothing wrong with using an embedded appliance.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
...oh wait, did my vote get counted?
Why in the world are they running antivirus software on these things? they are not connected to the internet and are only *allowed* to run software authorized by the manufacture. If they are suggesting that there security is that weak there is no way the should be used in elections.
COLUMBUS - In a decision that surprised nobody, a 6-man 6-woman jury voted 11-0 with no abstentions in favor of the plaintiffs. Testimony on damages resumes next week.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"antivirus software" the election machines or the counting machine is running windows. Raise the charges to high treason.
Oh please, Windows is the reason it went wrong?
No, the reason it failed is because it is a bad product.
I've used Windows and Linux software, as have many people here, and believe me, I've seen great and crap software on both platforms. Writing for non windows platforms doesn't infer some magical 'excellence' to code.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
But shouldn't there be a law against tampering with elections? Like....a really really really serious, potentially company-destroying law?
The kind of law that would have fines and penalties so great, diebold is sent to the brink of bankruptcy and it's CEO's are all incarcerated?
Maybe that's a little extreme sounding to some, but when you consider that the very foundations your country was built on are at stake, you have to take a tough stand.
I certainly don't agree with the death penalty or anything like that, but I do think this should be a matter of the utmost importance.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
But somehow I just can't justify not using an OpenSource package for voting because the commercial solutions simply haven't done the job. The auditing aspect alone should require and OpenSource solution due to the need to track the behavior of the system. BTW, India seems to be able to make this work, but somehow we can't. Sigh...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
If these punitive damages are awarded, then we'll finally get to know how much a vote is worth.
If you assign punitive damages to a vote, aren't you then assigning a value to said vote? Since it's illegal to sell your vote to begin with, what good is it to assign a value to something you cannot sell in the first place.
If you can't sell or buy something, does it have value? Is it priceless or worthless?
Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold)
So their systems are for electing incumbent Premiers?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Why is it that the operating system on Dibold's computer *not* immune from virus attacks and needs antivirus software???
This is what happens when you run mission-critical operations on a Fisher-Price operating system. I won't name names.
Certainly voting technology should be open-source, cryptographically signed etc. But this is not the point. No matter where the software and hardware come from, there must be a unique certified official configuration, well ahead of the election. Ideally, there should be a way to prove that a given piece of hardware is in the certified configuration.
If there is adverse interaction between Diebold's software and the anti-virus software then the certified configuration should not have included the anti-virus software. Alternatively, once this was discovered. Diebold should have certified a new configuration (without the A/V) and removed the A/V product from the computers. In any case local authorities should not be in charge of making changes to the configuration, or installing software on their own (e.g. choosing the correct A/V product). To the customer, all components of the voting system should behave like black-box appliances -- not like general-purpose computers (independently of the underlying implementation).
Election workers found that votes were 'dropped' in at least 11 counties when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers. The same voting machines are used nationwide. The company blames a conflict between their software and antivirus software for the problem and says that an advisory was issued on the subject.
Ok, if you are buying computers to be used as election machines why would you even run an antivirus? There should be no way a virus could even touch the install. Don't connect it to the internet, and think twice before even networking it. Don't have a single USB port on it, no CD ROM drive, card reader, whatever. And no HDs. What they should really have is an open source BIOS (such as Linux BIOS) booting Linux or another OSS OS, which logs into a user that only has rights to use one program, and that is the only program installed. Preferably, the data should be stored on a Compact Flash card for fast booting which would have double or triple redundancy over multiple cards.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
PRemier Election Systems?
(captcha: disobey)
Electronic voting is FAST. Fast to get results. Some folks would be just as happy with results announced after a few days. Sorry, that isn't the climate in the US. You see, the TV News programs are going to announce a winner by midnight Eastern time. They have to. If they do not, nobody will watch their election results the next election and they lose millions (maybe billions) in ad revenue. Therefore it is a foregone conclusion they are going to announce a winner. And it will be by midnight Eastern time.
This was done in 2000. CBS announced Gore as the winner just before midnight Eastern time. Lots of folks went to bed knowing "their man" had won the election. Turns out, CBS was basing their "winner" declaration on exit polls and trends - just like they all do and have been doing since the beginning of such things. Only this time they were wrong. People woke up Wednesday morning and found out that somehow, after actually counting the votes, their man didn't win at all. Obviously the election had been stolen by the evil Bush.
Well, in 2008 if the counting isn't completed by midnight the TV News folks are going to announce someone as the winner. Maybe they are right, maybe not. Do you want to be around if McCain is announced as the winner early and it turns out Obama gets the nod two days later? Or, worse, Obama is announced early and McCain turns out to really have won. I see burning cities in November should that come to pass.
Another thing: with the elections running 50.0001% vs. 49.9999% counting individual votes becomes extremely important. We are way, way past the point where the accuracy of hand counting will lead to consistent results. Every count by hand is going to deliver different results because the accuracy is maybe 0.5% This has no effect when the difference is 10% of the vote. It changes the outcome when the difference is less than 0.5% of the vote total. Hand counting isn't going to get better than 0.5%, no matter what anyone does. There are people involved and that is just a limit on their abilities. So how many recounts do we go through and when does someone (like the Supreme Court) say to stop?
At this point in the US paper ballots might as well be exchanged for flipping a coin. Same outcome. I suppose paper ballots would feel a little better.
Wow, is there actually anyone buying this excuse? As if a voting system would not also send the grand total as a checksum. It would be immediately clear that something is wrong, as it should. Anti-virus programs or even a virus-infested recipient system should NOT interfere with the actual process. There should be a safe protocol that verifies that the information is sent and received correctly. Seriously, if voting machines can be compromised this easily, then that strongly reinforces the demand for a paper trail. Just have the machines print out a ballot (which should not contain a barcode, just have the voting information), have the voter check to see if it corresponds with his or her preferences and put it in a container. Then count those votes, by machine if you insist, but have them on hand for a recount by hand. Citizens can then challenge the voting tallies and see their votes recounted manually. There is nothing more important than the right to vote, it should not be this easy to lose votes somewhere in the process...
I'm hoping that this issue does not become partisan.
The CEO of the Diebold was a die-hard partisan, and a top fundraiser for a partisan candiate. We all remember the quote where he "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes" to the partisan candidate. And if by magic, election fraud allegedly helped the partisan candidate win the tightly contested election in Ohio.
These machines can be abused by either party.
Sure. Both parties may do it. The point is, the machines WERE abused by one of the parties. The machines are one problem. The abuse is a second problem. Since there is no audit trail, not even fair-minded, non-partisan individuals can audit the election result. How ironic. And partisan.
This situation was partisan from the start.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
Hail Discordia, I mean Dieboldia!
Amount of increased national debt (2008 National Debt - 2000 National Debt)
plus
Widow's and orphans benefits and social security payouts for soldiers dead in Iraq
times Ohio's population (2000)
divided by US total population (2000)
And then TREBLE DAMAGES.
Because that's how much it cost us.
Thank God my state uses mail-in permanent absentee optical scan paper ballots and only uses electronic ballots for disabled and/or elderly voters.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
A family friend of mine is part of an ohio voter watchdog mailing list.
The MSM has at best mentioned it in passing, but senior diebold officials with heavy connections to the republican party were left alone to perform "patches" on the voting machines which, aside from eye witnesses at the time, went entirely unlogged, and which were entirely unsupervised.
Shortly after, the 2004 presidential elections took place.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Diebold has already accidentally leaked the results:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
For starters, I may be a dual citizen (US/CDN) but I do not live in the US and have not had the pleasure to deal with such devices. Here it's all pen and paper and people tallying the votes at the end of the day.
I completely understand the need and want of the voter to have his/her vote cast confidentially. But my biggest wonder, if you want this to be accurate, why not get a receipt from the machine when you're done voting, with say a unique serial-type number on the bottom (not like a counter since someone could watch and figure out who was #42, for the completely paranoid). So the machine would register that you have voted, and that say #55828034 Voted for X but the two would not be associated. Then when the results are uploaded/downloaded/processed you would have a list of people that voted and a separate list of #'s with vote results. Then have a 'secure' government website which you could punch your unique # into and make sure that it matches what you intended to vote. If not there should be a 'contest vote' option to say go to a government office, prove your identity and have your vote changed and possibly the system reviewed (depending on the percentage of error).
Ok, that idea got away with me haha but I hope you get my drift.
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
Vote-counting fast without a ton of effort requires technology.
If you had a team of 10,000,000 million vote-counters and 20,000,000 watchers, you could have a Presidential election tally that was well within 1% of the final numbers within 2-3 hours easy. How?
Divide ballots into stacks of 20 or so. Tally up just the Presidential race on those stacks of 20. Have 1 watcher from each major party sign off on the count. This should take maybe 5-10 minutes max if there are no spoiled or unclear ballots.
Once you get the totals for each group of 20 ballots, then get precinct- or centralized-counting-location totals. Assuming 400 votes per precinct this shouldn't take more than 5 minutes past the last batch-count. Even with large precincts or centralized counting at county election HQ, you can do a completely manual count within 5-10 minutes of the final batch. Again, for each total, representatives from each party sign off.
Once you have those numbers, you fax them to state election headquarters then have someone there write down the numbers in words ("Two Thousand Twenty votes for Bush, Two Thousand Nineteen votes for Gore"), signed by representatives of all major parties, and fax it back to you. The local reps re-sign this and fax it back. The state should have a total within 5-10 minutes of getting the last one.
If there are unclear ballots, count them as "TBD" and report them as such.
Within 2-3 hours, each state would have a very clear count of "Candidate A," "Candidate B," and "unclear" votes for President, all using early-1980s technology.
Adding tech doesn't make the job faster or more accurate, it makes it take less people for the same desired level of speed and accuracy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The last politician to be hanged in America was Florida's own Rep. Chad.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There is no Columbus Post Dispatch. It is the Columbus Dispatch.
It says "Columbus Dispatch" on the fucking byline.
It says "Columbus Dispatch" on the publications' title.
It says "Columbus Dispatch" on the URL.
Cite your fucking sources properly.
--
So, the anti-virus found the hacked wormy software on the memory cards that helped the republicans cheat and disabled access to that card?
seems like something worked as it should.
They're using their grammar skills there.
This is clearly just the start. Ohio seems to have a slam dunk case against Diebold/Premier with regard to the newer machines. If Ohio wins this one, anti-Diebold suspicions become much more credible, and you can expect a deeper investigation into the company's role in the probably stolen 2004 election.
Some voting systems use cell phone based data modems.
Anyone who is interested in this topic owes it to themselves to seek out and watch the documentary called "Hacking Democracy" by HBO Films.
A treasonous attack on a republic is not the same as an attack on the Monarch (or the monarch's property; the USA is founded on this sort of 'treason'.)
No clear cut physical assaults on some person are necessary. Treason in a republic involves UNDERMINING THE SYSTEM OF REPRESENTATION! This clearly is a case of this. Since the USA (did) have a constitution, deliberate assault on it is also treason.
Treason (in this form of government) is not spy games or even assassination; often those are opposition to policies or groups and not the system itself or its constitutional foundation.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If these PCs are running anti-virus software, how do they get certified? Do they certify a certain set of definitions and hope they don't get hit by a newer virus, or do they update the virus software after certification and hope there's nothing dodgy in the update? And even more importantly, what are these machines being used for that makes them susceptible to viruses?
... the only elections they've affected were purely local ones.
And they didn't even affect them, since the miscounts were noticed and corrected from the paper audit trail built into the system.
You don't know that they didn't affect the elections. The miscounts THAT WERE VISIBLE may have been corrected. But that doesn't prove they aren't just the tip of an iceberg - like the mismatch of a few cents in an accounting ledger that may point to multiple errors that nearly canceled - in THAT check - while shorting one account by a bunch and boosting another by almost the same amount.
The tiny difference tell you something's wrong. They aren't necessarily the ONLY thing that is wrong. And if something else is wrong it may be wrong by a LOT.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If these machines affected the outcome of the election, perhaps it is the American people (and the people of Iraq) who should be seeking punitive damages from Diebold.
The American People MAY have been harmed and MAY have standing to sue. But that's a hard sell in court.
The State of Ohio HAS been harmed and DOES have standing to sue. (And they decided to do it. Oh, Goodie!)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Could you please always include the most important part of your message in the title (because everyone always reads them!) and then not repeat it anywhere in your post? Thanks!
As a side note, you can embed a *hardened* build of Windows 3.1 if you want...
Really this is nothing new. The only thing that makes it news is that enough people cared to catch the tampering. Will it change anything, probably not - the average American doesn't care enough about voting to begin with, much less the integrity the system. Then let's not even get onto the subject of the idiots that put Diebold machines in the States, in several cases without so much as a paper trail.
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
They.... run.... WINDOWS??!?!?!?!?!?
Run! Run for you lives!!!!!
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Can Diebold give us our constitution back or raise the dead?
So I take it this means McCain won't be taking Ohio this year? ;^P
--
Toro
they nation should contract the Nevada Gaming Commission to manage voting software development testing and quality assurance.
why do I have to think of these things....
FTFA:
/rant
"Arenâ(TM)t they supposed to be held in the spirit of freedom and openness?
Not in China."
yeah, blame china... The IOC doesn't have a track record for sending takedown notices / sueing to people displaying anything remotely Olympic branded:
http://news.sbs.com.au/worldnewsaustralia/ioc_sues_website_using_olympics_logos_552593
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-7217512_ITM
the IOC are just as bad as the MAFIIA, but they've got a perfect scapegoat to trial DRM this time around because the West aren't big fans of china as it is, so the IOC spin doctors say "we didn't want drm" publicly, while privately supporting the concept.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
> Come morning they found out that somehow, through some mysterious process after actually counting votes that Gore was no longer the winner. Even though he was announced as the winner the night before - based on exit polls and trends. So "obviously" the election was stolen by the evil Bush.
Your memory is pretty bad. They announced that Bush won (and that made people accuse Gore of trying to "steal" the election). Don't you even remember Gore's withdrawn election speech?
Mind you, I was one of those who thought back then that Gore was trying to steal the election. Knowing what I know now, I sincerely wish he had.
That said, you have a good point about the media, even if your memory is off.
Of course said fascist regime will no doubt immunize Diebold against any and all liability.
Nope, disagree, the old way with paper ballots means anyone can look at the ballots and count them, using any computerized system, closed source, open source, whatever, means you need to be an extremely well versed programmer with years of experience to even start to make sense out of the code and the vote tally at the end of the day. It fails the publicly auditable and verifiable test immediately because of that. We don't need computerized voting at all. We could stand a 24 hour voting cycle though, and simplified ballots, even if it meant multiple election days instead of the kitchen sink on one ballot. And a "none of the listed" option to "vote" for, to help eliminate the "lesser of two evils" phenomenon we all get to enjoy.
Karl Rove is about to be indicted for playing with the ohio election. Of course, in the end, my guess is that if this proceeds too fast, or if McCain gets in, it will not matter. Either W or McCain will pardon Rove. After all, the pub party ALWAYS comes before the nation or morality.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe this entire goddamn decade has been nothing but a Y2K bug in some virtual reality demo at some rave, jammed on "bummer" the whole time.
Can I get a reboot?
--
make install -not war
As others have said here before, a Diebold tech installing a patch is not unusual (even if IMHO should not be allowed unless you can recertify it before use) but when "senior Diebold officials" do it you have a situation as unusual as George Bush coming over to mow your lawn.
That's the explanation! Bush had his friends rig the election! That bastards. There was no way Bush was actually popular enough in 2004 to win cleanly. Another anti-Democratic move by Karl Rove, the pusbag.
Then have a 'secure' government website which you could punch your unique # into and make sure that it matches what you intended to vote
Perfect scheme for vote-buying and coercing. The union boss would demand that the local return their vote slips to him so he can check to see if they voted properly according to union demands or they won't get the money they were promised.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy just doesn't work.
Live Free or DieBold
A good movie which deals in part with some of the shenanigans that go on in Ohio is Stealing America : Vote by Vote by Dorothy Fadiman.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Funny I think that people are so cautious to trust computers here, but they're fine for everything else. Just make it open. We can gain some advantages.
-Immediately before voting, you are handed a number. How we generate these numbers is up for debate. Perhaps they are centrally generated and serial. Perhaps a hash of name + DOB + other stuff. Each choice here opens different doors.
-Barcode equivalent to said number must be scanned at the machine. Number must also be entered on an onscreen key pad.
- Number + voting choices + timestamp + voting machine id are stored in a central database. Immediately. Nothing local.
-You get a receipt with your Number + voting choices + timestamp + machine ID. It also has these other handy value on there. A digital signature, created by said central authority with its private key. The public key is well known long in advance.
-After the election, the entire result set is made available for download. Yeah, a recount is a big fucking deal. We have these neat machines that are good at math. The bigger deal here is that if you check the database after you voted and the entry for your number doesn't match, you scream bloody murder. If you don't trust the machine, any party can verify the central authority's signature.
-But in addition to 'any' party, it is critical to have a non-networked verification appliance, which does nothing but verify the central signature for you before you physically leave. If you scream bloody murder at this point, we can consider the plain-text part of the receipt trusted. You obviously couldn't have faked the entire receipt while being watched by everyone. More on this soon.
Nice huh? Let's recap some advantages here:
-You can verify that your vote was counted and correctly
-You can't determine who voted for whom, except yourself.
-The receipt actually means something
Let's elaborate on that third point.
There are several means of lying to you, which can't easily be solved without adding machines into the mix
-What if the receipt says you voted for X but the machine recorded you as voting for Y? This is as good as pressing the wrong button. The signatures will both be valid. But if the plain-text portion shows the wrong candidate, you'll notice and scream. If the plain-text portion doesn't match the the central signature (the one most directly relevant to proper recording) you will catch this at the non-networked verifier. The receipt can still be trusted having not left the polling place, so you will be allowed to vote on another machine, as meanwhile the machine you previously used is marked for a serious investigation...
-What if the central authority records whatever it wants but produces a normal signature? The receipt will be considered entirely valid and endorsed. People will notice quickly as they check the database from home. You have a paper trail that can be trusted. What if the signature is bogus? People notice before they leave the polling place.
Up to this point? Criminal negligence bordering on treason. Open source needs to step up.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
They rejected a $2.6 billion bid for the company as too low in March.
But it seems that punitive damages is just getting greedy. Even without punitive damages, just charging them for the Iraq war will bankrupt them 220 times over.
One thing I still haven't seen anything like an explanation of is this: How is it possible to have any, let alone that many, technical and programmatic problems with something so conceptually simple? I mean, we are not talking about a control system for a Mars lander, or the entire Oracle database, or even a simple accounting application. This is a simple enough task: verify the user's eligibility to vote, accept a vote, save a log entry, send results to server. I bet I could make this work in a week in any language, up to and including Intercal. One would have to go out of one's way to create a transmission problem that would lose votes.
So perhaps the answer is that somebody has gone out of their way to make something that looks like a faulty system, so the result of elections could be manipulated under the cover of "technical difficulties". Or are they just criminally incompetent?
So, the anti-virus found the hacked wormy software on the memory cards that helped the republicans cheat and disabled access to that card?
seems like something worked as it should.
I think Diebold just admitted that their own software is recognised as malware. Probably for good reason.
connecting a windows box to the Internet & then trusting it to determine your country's government is just stupid.
Whether the application code is excellent or not is largely irrelevant if the platform is crap code. That is the point you seem to be missing.
A thin layer of gold paint on a turd looks fine until someone pokes it with a stick. Then it stinks. People are starting to poke sticks at Deibold. Deibold are starting to stink. Which bit is rubbish is really a question of blame, but building a voting machine infrastructure that requires anti-virus software is pretty messed up. That anti-virus software compromising it's primary function is laughable, if you're not from the USA. Elections being run using systems where the anti-virus software is known to compromise the system's core function of vote counting... ...what words can describe how wrong that is?
thx e
"The Columbus Post Dispatch reports
Hey dumbass, it's not the Columbus Post Dispatch. It's the Columbus Dispatch. Even if you're not versed in the names of the local newspapers of every city in our nation, it's right at the top of the web page that you linked to where it says "A Division of The Columbus Dispatch". Way to learn how to read!
Yes. What a lot of people miss is elections don't just have to be fair, they have to be seen as fair.
Enough voters have to be able to look at the elections and say "OK it's been done reasonably fairly, and looks like we lost fair and square".
So when their candidates lose, most of them will "go home", and the cops can handle the few sore losers left that try to do stupid stuff.
And also this way the rest of the world won't laugh at your elections.
A fair and fancy electronic voting system with complex checks and all that might not satisfy Trailer Park Joe (or even Harry the Hacker - since Harry knows how easy it is to hack systems).
Whereas hand counted ballots might, especially when observers from Trailer Park Joe's party can see every vote that's counted, from sealed ballot boxes that never left the polling area (nor the sight of the observers - party and independents).
You might be able to rig one area, but to rig many areas without being caught is going to be tough.
I'm a coder and I think electronic voting is a bad idea AND pointless.
Hand counting scales with voter population. The more voters you have the more people you should have to count your votes.
And what's the rush? You don't need the results in 1 minute. Take the time to do it right.
The USA is willing to spend trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to pick a government for Iraq, but when it comes to picking the Government of the Most Powerful Nation in the World, diebolded elections are good enough.
What OS do these voting machines run on and who wrote the software ?
davecb5620@gmail.com
what does 4 extra years of the Bush Administration work out to in punitive damages?
# ERROR N-1: using electronic ways of doing non-electronic-meant things.
(what is the goal ? time ? people can't just sit a few hours, or just sleep forgetting elections until tomorrow, or next day ?)
# ERROR N-2: doing such an important thing on an electronic device wired to the internet, or other unsafe interconnections [deduced from #2-b]
# ERROR N-2-b: installing an antiviral software on such an important device. (remember anti-viruses are NOT trustful softwares) [see #2 why antiviral is useless]
# CRITICAL ERROR: installing and using windows on such an important device for such an important task as any non-pc (or simply non windows), reliable architecture (or simply reliable OS) is supposed to be able to deal with two variables and numbers.
Due to CRITICAL ERROR the system will reboot now. Please do NOT save any presidential vote later than 1999, so that they can be lost.
Please. If you do so, there will be cake for everyone.
Cakes never lie. Presidents do.
Segmentation Fault in "Life, Universe and Everything" at line 42. Don't Panic.
The point for me isn't that we can't know how many, if any, were stolen, but the bare fact that a private company led by a man who promised to help the Republicans win the election took deliberate, careful steps to make sure no one would be able to check.
Even if we had a God's-eye view and we knew that they didn't rig the election, deliberately removing oversight is evidence of ill intent. If I work in a bank vault and you found that I'd disabled the cameras and deleted/shredded the logs, it wouldn't matter if you couldn't prove theft. My intent would be obvious, as it was with Diebold.
If a bunch of the newer anti-terrorism laws were actually used to nail Diebold and their seemingly fraudulently-elected cronies?
Not that it's likely to happen, but it's fun to think about.
:)
In Chicago, they've been doing it that way since long before machines.
Machines are just faster at it.
Also, in Chicago, it was probably 15-0 for acquittal.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'd like to see some people elected who can solve the real problems without the impractical ideology.
I have to agree with what you say. Even I consider my party leaders to be nuts.
Of course, I consider myself a libertarian mostly on four points:
Government budgets should be balanced - on the federal level by cutting spending, not increasing taxes .gov out of the marriage business.
Guns should be legal(but regulated for safety - IE carrying is legal, brandishing/discharge in an unsafe manner is not; self defense encouraged)
Drugs & Prostitution should be legal(but regulated for safety, must be 18 to use, drugs are cut with safe substances, of a specified potency, Sex workers need to meet the same rules as the porn industry)
Beyond that - civil unions, get the
I'm also pro-choice and pro-death penalty when we KNOW he's the sicko who did it. I believe that it's possible to be environmentally friendly without breaking the economy. I want China's wages to go up even faster, bringing the day when 'made in the USA' is the more economic choice for more than national pride sooner. I don't think that bio-fuels are ready for the prime time yet, but I'd encourage hybrids where it makes the most sense - like city taxies.
If I got in I'd try to simplify the tax system. I like the idea of fairtax, but believe that it needs work - and certainly wouldn't get rid of the entire IRS, as you'd still need to audit businesses.
I don't read AC A human right
If these machines are so eminently hackable, no one from our community has ever obviously hacked them? I totally agree that it looks like the machines were deliberately designed to be tamper-friendly (full version of windows, access db, on and on); but it seems odd to me that while we've broken DVD encryption, pawned websites, massive multiplayer games, stolen identities, made pirating music something a child could do - not ONE person has thrown a practical joke that exposes the flaws in the arguably the least secure machines of the bunch. Sure, I've heard lots of people suggest countless *ways* to do it - but I've never seen it done.
To some extent, the "stolen" elections theory strikes me the way the 9/11 conspiracies do. Yes, I can believe there are people in power who'd be *willing* to have done it - but I find it much harder to believe they're also so competent that they'd have been able to without getting caught red-handed. I don't believe the government is telling the truth about, well, pretty much anything - but to suggest they've stolen the elections from under our noses while thwarting every hacker on the planet who'd be willing to expose them seems to be given them more credit than they're due.
All explanations welcome.
I live in the Northern Virginia area. Not too long ago we started using the computer voting system where we don't get any kind of paper confirmation of how we voted nor is there a paper trail to assist in recounts.
And coincidentally(?) there have been a lot of news reports recently about how the Northern Virginia area is voting more Democratic and could swing the whole state in the upcoming election.
Makes you think...
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
It's because in a plurality voting system, the stable configuration is for two parties to claim the two large, reasonably contiguous blocks of voters as their base. Then they define the political landscape in terms of an axis drawn between the two blocks, the precise orientation of which is somewhat arbitrary. Finally they build winning coalitions of voters by starting with people in their base, and poaching voters just over the borders of the other party's territory. They do this by (a) pretending to be closer to the center of mass of all voters than they really are, and (b) pretending the other party is further from the center of mass of all voters than they really are.
Destroy the system and let a new one evolve in its place, under the same rules, and you'll get the same configuration. The axis may be drawn slightly differently, but it will function the same.
So, it's not not true that there is not difference between the two parties. There are real differences between the two parties. However these differences don't exhaust the possible ways you could build parties; the exact direction that the "left-right" axis culd be drawn other ways. Furthermore, the parties strive to cover over their real differences when they're in a head to head match up.
George W. Bush illustrate this. He is a candidate who never would be nominated by the Democrats, which right there shows you that there are differences between the parties. He might not have been the best candidate the Republicans could have put up, but that's a different issue. During the election for his first term, Bush sold himself as a "compassionate conservative", which is classic political boundary poaching.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm slightly different, in that if I were to reform the USA, I'd simply take away quite a bit of the power of the federal government. Leave it somewhere between where it is now and about where the EU is now.
For example - I'd give the senate back to the state legislators. That ensures that senators are beholden to the state they come from. I believe that this would tend to act to preserve state powers, limiting federal ones.
I'd also create a 'house of repeals'. Their job is to balance the budget(by slashing, if necessary), get rid of bad legislation, outdated legislation, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
Of the counties mentioned where votes were dropped, Cuyahoga (Cleveland area) is overwhelmingly Democratic. Butler (Cincinnati suburbs) and Montgomery (Dayton), OTOH, are much more Republican.
What we need is an Open Inspections of Electronic Voting Machines Act which would require that any citizen be allowed to inspect the software and security process/procedures used in any electronic voting machine. The manufacturer would still be allowed to copyright the software so that competitors could not copy it. This would go a long way toward convincing me that such machines were trustworthy.
I'm not sure that most voters really care, though. In the recent OH primary, voters were allowed to ask for a paper ballot if they didn't trust the machines. I was the only voter in my precinct who used a paper ballot.
FreeSpeech.org
>>> Banks have a lot more money to spend on ATMs than election
>>> officials have to spend on voting machines. Banks also have
>>> a lot more to lose if the machines malfunction.
More to lose? More to lose than starting an unjust war
based on lies? More than shredding the constitution?
>> This is what happens when you run mission-critical operations
>> on a Fisher-Price operating system. I won't name names.
Why are you insulting Fisher-Price? Last time I looked their products
work.
> Electronic voting is FAST.
And it appears that most people think fast is more important than :-(
accurate.
Which makes me wonder, WHY is it taking so long to investigate
and hopefully fix this mess? Why is our news filled with people
worried about the election of some 2 bit dictator thousands of
miles away but not a peep about the problems with our own elections?
India.
And it worked.
And if it did not work, there will be so much protest that country will come to a halt.
Remember, when first amendment is gone, time to use the 2nd one!
Seems there was a TV Show on the History channel or something like it, relating to the Bush Election and how those machines could be duped by stacking the data in favor of one candidate or the other, before voting could take place, but the city (might have been this one) went ahead and approved the purchase of the machines.
Here's an article about it from 2006:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11391
Even earlier - 2005:
http://www.wesh.com/news/5542983/detail.html
Heck it was even posted and discussed on Slashdot:
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/31/1646246
Unfortunately, I can't find the TV show that I watched, where some City was presented evidence and went ahead anyway and purchased it.