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Kentucky Officials "Changed Votes At Voting Machines"
The indispensible jamie found a report out of Kentucky of exactly the kind of shenanigans that voting-transparency advocates have been warning about: a circuit court judge, a county clerk, and election officials are among eight people indicted for gaming elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. As described in the indictment (PDF), the election officials divvied up money intended to buy votes and then changed votes on the county's (popular, unverifiable) ES&S touch-screen voting systems, affecting the outcome of elections at the local, state, and federal levels.
Apparently the people told voters that hitting the "Vote" button would complete their vote, when it actually just brought up a confirmation screen. It was after the voter left that the people charged went and changed the votes, then completed the vote.
So, yeah, that's definite election fraud and those involved should go to jail for a nice long stretch. But the headline leads you to believe this was somehow a voting machine flaw, rather than a social engineering attack based around shitty UI design ("Vote" means vote, not, "Confirm my Choices").
From the article:
, the Election Day scheme, carried out in primary and general elections in at least 2004 and 2006, was accomplished by taking advantage of a "feature" on all DRE (usually touch-screen) voting systems and "voter unfamiliarity with new voting machines."
Essentially, they tricked voters into leaving the 'booth' after pressing the "Vote" button on the ES&S iVotronic. That button, does not actually cast the vote, as one might think (and as these voters were told), but instead, it brings up a review screen of the voter's "ballot."
So this looks like basic social engineering, not exploiting any specific flaws of the electronic machine (other than poor UI design).
Seriously. How is this not treason?
In the context of the U.S., its Founding Fathers were very reluctant to label as treason anything that could be used by a tyrant to strike down on legitimate internal opposition. Therefore, they were left with only two very specific acts that would be considered treason:
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. (...)"
"Conspiracy to rig an election" is just not on that list.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
I trust you can demonstrate how this action fits, since you have declared that "treason is the proper definition"?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Well, it took some googling, but it seems the five involved were Democrats. So it's probably pretty safe to assume the stolen votes were stolen from various Republican candidates and given to various Democrat candidates.
Though why anyone should care about the Party of someone running for the local School Board is beyond me (yes, one of the elections in question was for the local School Board).
Note, by the way, that what happened was good, old-fashioned, vote-buying. With a twist, in that the people actually handed the money to buy votes in the field decided to keep the money and just change a few votes themselves.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'd trust this story a whole lot more if Slashdot had quoted the actual newspaper article rather than the frothing partisan political hackblogger's "report."
If you can read this sig, congratulations, you have your glasses on!
You obviously didn't go through the indictment itself, where the party affiliations, when relevant is given. So the Democrat election commissioner is named in paragraph 4, and the Republican judge in paragraph 7. The #1 unfounded assumption a person makes is that the world is the way s/he thinks it is. In short, there's plenty of evidence that what you wrote is false. While the party affiliation of most people indicted is not mentioned (as it does not pertain to their job description), when mentioned, both parties come in.
The 4 Fascist American Presidents: Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Obama.
I don't think you know what this word means. And your feeble attempt at fear mongering doesn't work particularly well when it is clear that you do not even know what the words you use mean.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.