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Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit
Gottesser writes "Bev Harris over at Black Box Voting has done everyone a favor and released her 2008 Election Protection toolkit as an ebook. It's like Cliff notes of Bev's 8+ years of experience on the front lines of the modern voting rights movement. The ebook presents succinct information to get individuals actively involved in the full-contact sport that is democracy. The target audience is those who believe that the political process requires more than just showing up to vote once every four years those who know that something's up with those voting machines. You may remember Bev Harris from her Emmy-nominated HBO documentary 'Hacking Democracy.' I've been working on election integrity issues in Ohio for some time now and have met Bev several times. Her work is nothing less than groundbreaking. Please check it out."
Yep -- elitist claptrap. Nobody knows anything public, sez Plato. But, when the issue is taking my money or property or freedom I have FIRST HAND INFO. I am the expert and will vote accordingly. Do not confuse politics with quantum mechanics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u6lCBnRoHQ
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4SSvVbhLw
Democracy is worthless without people making informed decisions, and yet you can't force people to become informed. So what is the human race to do.
the voting machines work fine. do you really think a major corporation like diebold is going to make a mistake on something as important as voting?
Yes. If Ford Motor Co. can make a mistake on something as important as keeping gas tanks from exploding on impact (see Ford Pinto) and Firestone can make a mistake on something as important as preventing the tread from separating the rest of the tire (see Ford Explorer) and Mattel can make a mistake on testing their imports from China for lead paint, all of which cause people to DIE, then yes, Diebold can make a mistake on something as important as voting, which is not actually directly responsible for any deaths.
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Who cares about election theft when the average voter isn't capable of making an informed choice in the first place? And no, I don't mean the 50% picking the other party, I do mean that 90% of the people voting hardly have a clue about the issues at stake.
It absolutely horrifies me to think that a good chunk of the people who'll be casting a ballot this fall still believe that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks.
If you've read any of my posts you know I'm an Obama supporter... But I'm really not so rabid as to suggest that my opinions are the only valid ones. There's plenty of debate over most of the major issues and folks are perfectly free to disagree with me. But I really wish folks would disagree based on actual facts.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Well, there's always the theory that the 90% who have no clue will even out at roughly 45% on each side so that the election will be decided by the remaining 10%.
I am officially gone from
If you feel that politics, law and economics are easier to grasp than quantum mechanics, fine, but I am not convinced.
Good for you that you have first hand info on most issues, but what I'm trying to get across: 90% of the population doesn't know what the DMCA or net neutrality are, or why it might affect them. But that doesn't make the issues irrelevant, nor their choices informed.
Oh, and I didn't mean to claim I'm part of the 10% that does know it all, for most issues I'm probably just as clueless as the rest and will be voting on instinct as well.
On page 48 (or 24 since the PDF has two document pages per PDF page) of http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit2008.pdf they recommend keeping a sequence of snapshots of the web pages reporting the raw results to detect any anomalies.
Now keeping snapshots of webpages to analyze how they change sounds exactly like what Archive.org was designed for. It would be nice if on the night of the election, Archive.org set their refresh (?) rate for those pages abnormally high. Then the data can be used by everyone and not just those who thought ahead of time to take the snapshots.
people who'll be casting a ballot this fall still believe that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks.
Good point. But just to be fair, maybe you should also mention the people who believe that raising taxes on the rich will not make the economy worse? Or, how about the people who think that more protectionism is a good thing?
I consider these views as wrong as the one about Iraq and 9/11. But, that is the nature of a democracy and you have to take the bad with the good. The stupid people aren't all on the other side.
GOP rigging can't happen in the People's Republic of Maryland due to the fact that the GOP is outnumbered something like 2 to 1. In the 2004 election, when I was registered as a Republican, I was directed to a particular voting machine. No body before me had used that one and as far as I could tell no one after me did. It seemed peculiar. The paranoid part of me says that the votes on that machine were not counted.
Then why wasn't the 2006 senate election rigged, oh because your side won.
I don't have a "side" in the sense that you are thinking. I'm small 'l' libertarian and a confirmed swing voter.
And Congressional elections aren't like Presidential elections. With a presidential election, you have ONE election, and it's very national. Congressional races are lots of local elections. And, until 2006, it was previously believed by both the right and the left that national issues don't decide Congressional races, only local issues do. Guess they were wrong. (No surprise, because the right and left are wrong quite a bit)
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I've always said a voting ballot should be a multiple-choice test, where the voter has to prove that he or she has at least some clue what the candidates stand for. It shouldn't be a test that requires above-average intelligence, just an above-average (current average) effort to make an informed decision.
A lot of people agree with you. Here is their proposed test:
(1) When does human life begin?
A. Conception
B. some time later
C. I don't know.
That's it; just one question.
Only votes with x out of y questions answered correctly should be counted
Scoring protocol:
Answer A: your vote counts. Answer B: your vote doesn't count. Answer C: go to the religious institution of your choice for an education.
and the questions could be something relatively objective
Nothing could possibly be more objective that this. Objective question, objective answer. By the way, what is this "relative" word you're using? You're not proposing morals are relative, are you? Morals are objective.
QUOTE: I can't understand why anyone would vote for him. Let me supply an answer just so you understand the opposition. I will probably be modded down for this, but here goes... 1. Being a disabled vet, I would rather vote for someone who served their country and NEVER backed down even after years of torture for their service. This as opposed to someone who refused to wear a lapel pin of a flag for a while. (Whatever his reasons were - things like that don't sit well with us veterans) 2. Associations with terrorists, and anti-american groups. See - this is the sticky part. I DO question the patriotism of people who "damn America", who are not proud of their country, and have business dealings with people or groups who have publicly acknowledged they wished they had blown up more US buildings. (William Ayers...) 3. Someone who is PROMISING to tax me more - doesn't really encourage me. I work hard for what I have. Instead of watching MTV or sitting around drinking and playing football - I studied as a youngster. Don't blame me if my hard work gets me a higher paycheck. I will give to charities or other groups as I see fit - but don't take my money from me by force and give it to groups who did nothing to earn it. Ok - that's my main list. I am sure there will be plenty of people to tear me down, or down-mod me. I just wanted to make a point that there ARE people who disagree with you, and some of the reasons for it. I personally don't like McCain as a candidate as much as I would have liked Ron Paul (oops - I've said too much!), but I really don't like Obama as a candidate. There's my $0.02... now get off my lawn!
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Err, the '95 OKC attack? Exactly how was Iraq tied to it again? As I understand it, it was entirely domestic, and (to quote the Wikipedia article, since I like the phrasing): "Investigators determined that they were sympathizers of a militia movement and that their motive was to retaliate against the government's handling of the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents (the bombing occurred on the anniversary of the Waco incident)."
The only link between Iraq and '95 OKC bombing was a conversation between American Morning's Miles O'Brien and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). If you have some other connection, then please cite it for me.
Au contraire. McCain has always been representative of those of us Republicans that cheered when he condemned the extreme right for intolerance. There's plenty of people who have noticed that McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts and argued to pay off the federal debt instead, argued against expanding medicare when we can't pay for what we already had, argued against NCLB (well intended but ultimately a disaster)... and, of course, McCain made himself even more famous by arguing that the USA needed more troops in Iraq. Most damning of all, Woodward, hardly a fan of Republican politics, has McCain quoted storming out of the white house, saying, "All I get about the war is f--- spin."
These are all things McCain did before running for President, and especially before getting the nomination. Since that point he has swung hard to the Republican party lines, even to the point of saying he would not vote for bills he sponsored on immigration. He's backed away from his signature issue of finance reform, and despite being anti-war in the past, no one accuses him of that now.
The fact of the matter is that regardless of what McCain championed before, he's a different man now, with different positions. If you're voting for the McCain of 2000, or even 2004, you're voting for someone who doesn't exist.
Obama is doomed in this election. It's not even that he's black that's the problem, its his politics and his pick of VP. Then, there's a character test here. Obama's never really lost and one has to wonder if he will panic when McCain pulls ahead in the polls post convention.
Let's talk about VP picks first. Until Palin was picked we heard nothing from McCain or the right other than Obama was inexperienced. Palin is as inexperienced as national level politicians get. A governor of two years does not a VP make - and that's about her only credential. Biden may not be your favorite person, but he has a great deal of experience backing him. Further, he has a lot of blue collar people on his side - and has fought for that class well for a long time. He's not the terrible pick the right is making him out to be - to the contrary one has to wonder if they keep calling him a bad pick because he's a good one? This idea that no one likes him is demonstrably false - he's being elected time and again, so it can't be that no one likes him - just no one you like.
But this notion of a character test... where is that from? What makes you think that Obama is going to suddenly implode because of poll results? What, for that matter, makes you think his moves are desperate? Which moves, particularly? And why is it that being a 'classic class war candidate' so bad? Especially in an era when our middle and lower classes have been at the spear's point of the sacrifices our country has demanded?
He's got himself surrounded by so many leaches flocking to all that campaign money he's raising that he's becoming almost Carter like in his perceived obligation to take heed of all them.
Where are you getting this from? Is there any actual evidence he's being pulled in too many directions? Or is that just the spin right now on why Obama will never work? And where is this idea that he's swung to the left come from? Most on the left would actually say that Obama has swung towards the center (backing off on eliminating our commitment in Iraq, backing off the telecom amnesty) far more than he has taken up hard leftist issues (like... what? Nothing.)
What I hear consistently from the right is that Obama is 'maniacal', 'messianic', 'too leftist', 'egotistical', 'desperate'. Where these claims can be supported or refuted by evidence, they're refuted. His supporters on the left don't think he's left enough - only the right is trying to claim that he's left (presumably to sway the centrists to picking a right candidate). They talk about leeches on his campaign, but never about the fact that of McCain's top ten advisers, se
[Ego]out
Just... wow... the first sentence of your response sums up my counter-response pretty well.
Forced labor, anarchy, elimination of currency. These are your justifications for public ballots. And that's just to address the two example scenarios I raised. I (and certainly the mafioso's I was using for an example) used money as a placeholder for the attribution of power. Even if you eliminated money, individuals will still strive for power, and they will still use force to acquire it.
Look, if you believe in those other things you're speaking of, then you're in the wrong country. They are completely against the very reason this country was founded and has flourished to date. I'd say that voting is one of the least of your concerns.
Besides, without police, who enforces 1 person 1 vote limitations? Maybe everyone should get to vote as often as they like. Maybe I look up the voting records of each individual in my area and shoot anyone who didn't vote the same way as me. The fundamental issue with your basic premise here is "co-operating," it's in the individual's best interests to not cooperate as long as everyone else is; read the Tragedy of the Commons if you don't agree with that.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!