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Computerized Election Results With No Election
_Sharp'r_ writes "In Honduras, according to breaking Catalan newspaper reports (translations available, USA Today mention), authorities have seized 45 computers containing certified election results for a constitutional election that never happened. The election had been scheduled for June 28, but on that day the president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted. The 'certified' and detailed electronic records of the non-existent election show Zelaya's side having won overwhelmingly."
Oh noes, electronic records can be faked by people who have physical access to the machines. Didn't see THAT one coming.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
There's a lot of reason to believe Zelaya is corrupt, and shouldn't be Honduras' president. But that means Honduras should impeach him, or convict and imprison him, removing him from office, if that's how their constitution works (which is what appears to to be the case).
Any government process that features the army forcing a president out on a plane in his pajamas is at least as unacceptable as a crooked election keeping one in power.
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make install -not war
Yea, because they totally couldn't have stuffed boxes full of fake paper ballots.
As it has been said from the beginning, anyone with physical access to the machine and sufficient knowledge of how the machine works can alter the results, and it is clear that the ousted President (who had called for an illegal referendum to have term limits removed so he could basically be president for life) had people with both those things.
For electronic voting, you have to assume that the manufacturer and everyone involved in the storage, transport and operation of such voting machines to be acting in good faith, and I don't think you can find a country on this planet that has everyone acting this way.
Technology is a great thing, but it is not the solution to every problem.
Nobody's saying electronic records can't be faked through physical access to the machines. You're the only one who seems surprised at that, in order to deny it should be surprising. Which is a straw man argument.
This story is important because it crossed the line from possible, to (evidently) actual. Which has consequences. Not the expected consequences of helping keep a president in power, but (even more notably) in helping to keep one ousted by a coup this past week out of power, boosting arguments of his corruption.
Next you'll be sarcastically moaning "oh, noes, presidents are corrupt". FYI: Yes, and when they are, the people need to be outraged about it, and get rid of them.
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make install -not war
I can see why the powers that be like the efficiency of a modern electronic voting system.
Clearly we humans don't have to do anything at all. The machines can read our minds and we get 100% voter turnout with guaranteed accurate results ;-)
and the industry shills who have sold their conscience:
you can screw with paper ballots. but a lot less easily and a lot less slower and with a lot more effort and a lot easier to trace than the effort required to mess with electronic voting
simply for the sake of the integrity of democracy, electronic voting should NEVER happen, in ANY country
do you really need any convincing about what can happen to a country if a vote is put in doubt considering recent events?
not that iran used electronic voting, but imagine how much LESS forensic evidence there would be if iran ever lets anyone independently monitor the results
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Its far easier for a 3rd party overwatching election committee to verify that the box is empty before the election, than to verify that the electronic election is actually reset, and the machines aren't tampered, and have no back doors, and so forth.
The problem is that he is corrupt to the wrong people.
Geez, you got a story here where there just HAPPENED to be found evidence, a long time AFTER the fact, where the finders have every reason to want to find it and weeks of opportunity of "finding" said information. That the finders happen also to be liked by a big northern neighbour with a long history of meddling in its southern countries politics to tune of killing thousands of women and childeren and lots of experience faking, oops I mean, WITH faking in their own elections...
Well, I just don't know who to believe here.
It rather telling the american press is all algainst a corrupt left leader but supported with money and weapons corrupt right wing leaders who killed thousands. It makes me highly doubtfull of any reports about south america.
I think the "true" story here is that this guy got ousted NOT for being corrupt or a crook or faking elections BUT for listening to the wrong people when in power. His replacement ain't any better, but he does listen to the right people.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You may not have noticed this, but paper ballots are ... made of paper. And lots of ballots take up lots of space. They're heavy. They have to be disposed of. This takes time. People notice. There are witnesses. The amount of effort involved in altering or covering up the results of a fully computerized election is so much less than the amount of effort involved in altering or covering up the results of an election that uses paper ballots that the two aren't really comparable.
Of course paper ballots are no guarantee of an honest election. Nor is there any guarantee that locking your door will keep your house from being broken into. But an all-electronic election is like leaving your front door hanging wide open and putting a sign in your yard that says, "Come take stuff."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
They avoided more serious bloodshed the way they did it. If this is a true fact, and he had remained "in power", he would have beern still able to order around a lot of the military forces who were loyal to him, plus cause mass demonstrations, etc and be able to coordinate it better. Because there is no way he would have gone along with getting impeached.
Even on the surface it was a blatant power grab by him, the entire issue was designed to turn him into el presidente for life. The congress there and the judges ALREADY had told him this wasn't proper nor legal, but he was going aherad with this "vote" scam regardless. So what makes you think he would have gone along with an impeachment? They were under the gun of making a time critical decision, and didn't off the guy or anything, just got him out before the situation got worse. If they hadn't already warned him about it that would be different, but they did warn him before the fact.
Ya, two sucky choices, but I think they chose the lesser of two suckages there.
But all of this is based on "if" and we just don't know the veracity of this latest revelation, but we do know about the power grab he was attempting, sort of like chavez making himself the president (basically and practically)for life "legally".
Term limits are a dang spiffy idea when it comes to politicians, no matter how popular they are, and changing the rules, like he wanted to do with this plebiscite, at the last second, is a serious mistake and transparently was just an effort to accrue more power under some umbrella of it legally happening. The people there had a right wing dictatorship like forever, and a lot of them could plainly see a left wing version now happening, and they just went "no you don't!".
That's how I have read these ongoing events anyway.
Once they have been granted suffrage and not before.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I for one, am just happy to know that these crazy foreigners can screw up something as great as electronic voting. At least I can be safe in my assurances that it can't happen in a great democracy like the United States!
The main benefit of paper ballots are the many eyes and hands that the ballots and ballot boxes go through.
Think of it this way: the trademark images of the Iraqi elections a few years back were the inked thumb and the translucent ballot box. Neither are inherently secure, but the inked thumb made it more difficult for people to vote early and vote often without the risk of someone noticing it. Likewise, the translucent ballot boxes made it more difficult for the bins to be stuffed before hand without the risk of someone noticing it. Computers are so incredibly opaque that it is nearly impossible for someone to notice discreprancies without direct and intensive observations as well as a great deal of technical knowledge.
Now we all know that elections are fixed, even with pen and paper ballots. It is possible to pay off the right people so that they conveniently don't notice anything. Almost everyone else can be intimidated into not noticing anything. But, either way, more people will notice the discreprancies and people tend to have long memories about such things. So there is still a potential for them to remedy it.
...could it have been "Dieobld" by any chance?
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Elections don't just have to be fair, they have to be seen as fair (or at least fair enough). Otherwise they increase the odds of massive riots even if the result was correct.
Electronic voting systems are still opaque to the average person even if they happen to be fair.
In contrast when paper voting is done properly, the various parties can have their representatives observe the whole process of the voting, storage and counting. This is in fact done in many countries. It is not some "theory".
In "notorious" countries typically the "counting" is done behind closed doors, or observers aren't allowed to keep an eye over the ballot boxes. The more a country/gov hides the whole process, the more suspicious it will seem.
With electronic voting systems the counting is effectively done behind closed doors. And if you set things up so that independent and party representatives can observe the counting, the system ends up about as slow as paper voting, just more complex and expensive.
Electronic voting systems are only useful for the wrong reasons.
I have to admit that paper based voting fails if too many of the citizens in your country can't count properly. But by that time you probably have an idiocracy anyway.
It doesn't matter what Zelaya's politics were, if this is true then he clearly had no problem with electoral fraud. People on both sides of the political spectrum, from the extremists to the moderates, have shown time & time again that they will do whatever they can to stay in power. It is not limited to only the left or only the right, and making silly jabs at the "other" side like that is not only distasteful but juvenile as well.
"They have to be disposed of. This takes time. People notice. There are witnesses."
The president won the election, here, take this white confetti with random bits of black on it and spread it around to celebrate!
Disposing of a lot of paper isn't hard at all, companies do it constantly without anyone noticing or caring. Stick the ballots in a shredder, a good high quality one, and what comes out can't be considered ballots anymore, just random scraps of paper that could be anything. Take the scraps, put them in storage for a day or two, then toss them. Ta da, no evidence, and only a few witnesses (no more than electronic deletion requires).
E-voting is unsafe because there's no verification, not because it doesn't make paper ballots. If the e-voting machine spit out a paper ballot with your vote on it directly into the box it would still be insecure because you'd have no way to verify that what was on the ballot was what you wanted on the ballot. Paper != Instant safety, or even mild security.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
...when the populace was armed with muskets, and the government was armed with muskets.
Now the populace is armed with, at best, assault rifles, and the government is armed with tanks.
What really keeps the government in check is the right to join the military.
paintball
Military coup under direction of their congress and supreme court becasue the election he was trying to hold was against their constitution... for some reason you like to omit that part
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Is it? Why?
If I'm capable of rigging an election electronically, I could be capable of covering my tracks.
The congress and the supreme court tossed him from office when he violated the constitution. The Army just fulfilled their constitutional duty.
It would be no different than the US Senate convicting a President at trial, and the President refusing to leave office. At that point what the rest of the government is supposed to do is toss him, forcefully, if need be, although in the US it would probably be the Secret Service that did it.
paintball
Uh, to rig a paper election you will have to hide something. The more hiding you do the more suspicious it is. The more open the process is, the harder it is to cheat. With people watching each step e.g. checking that the boxes are empty, observing the voting, the storing and opening of the boxes, and the counting, it gets very hard to cheat on a massive enough scale.
Go see how paper voting is done in various countries and you can see it's really hard to rig in some countries, and easier in other countries (ballot boxes are moved, counting is done in secret by one organization).
Sure you can bribe people. But if so many are bribable, the country is screwed up so badly it hardly matters what system you use.
In contrast an electronic election is mostly _hidden_ to observers. So it should be suspicious by default.
If you set it up so that people can observe the storage and counting of the electronic votes, it's going to be as slow as paper voting, but more expensive and complicated.
The easiest way you can rig paper elections that are done openly and properly is with postal votes. However electronic voting systems are just as vulnerable to this problem - if not more so.
... would never plant such evidence to justify their coup, would they now?
You can use them to falsify election results, or justify why you ousted that president. Once you can't trust in what is stored in those computers, both alternatives are valid.
Here is why this story is important: Zelaya fought for a reelection referendum in spite of a ruling by the Honduran Supreme court. He was going against their constitution, then was purchasing voting machines from Chavez for this special election. Before these special elections could be held though, the military did pull a coup but then they gave it back to the people - just as democracy should work. Cool no? Now, word is coming out that these voting machines had results already "preloaded". Once these facts are verified, Zelaya will be judged for what he is/ is not. Bigger yet, if Chavez is seen as the source of these machines and implicated, then what standing would he have with the Venezuelan populace? Now is the chance for conspiracy theorists to come back that this is a secret plan of the US govt. to oust both Zelaya and Chavez but come on, has the US been that clever in its dealings with south america? Stay tuned
Seems to be a propaganda stunt by the coup regime. These kind of "relevations" could be used to discredit there opponent. It's the same juristic system that ordered the military to commit a coup that discovered these material and informed media that favor them. Remember that an army that is not loyal to Zelaya is supervising elections in Honduras?
So wait a second. Who certified these election results then? Something smells a little fishy here.
*Whoosh*.
(And that's the first time I've had cause to say that in response to a top level response... things are getting bad when the ACs are missing the point of the entire story, rather than just somebody's comment on it.)
The ~referendum that Zelaya was planning might well have been unconstitutionnal, but he didn't get to do it. Hence he did not break the constitution. Therefore the coup cannot begin to be justified by this stupid talking point.
But anyway, there is very good precedent for that kind of thing. De Gaulle ran a referendum in 1958 that gave birth to what we call the Vth Republic, a major change in the type of government (from parliamentary to mostly presidential).There was no provision for this kind of change in the IVth Republic's constitution, therefore it was unconstitutionnal stricto sensu. But constitutionnalists agree that the will of the people takes precedence over the letter of the constitution, esp. when such a vote is won with as significant margin as it was.
Opponents didn't spare the General and called him a dictator. He replied back with a question, "if you look back at what I have done and how I've fought tyranny, do I look like a dictator? And would I begin such a carreer at my age?"
But don't let history get in the way of your rightard talking points. I just want to point out that your ugly type is not in power anymore, at least in the US. (Unfortunately, we have inherited the Bush Jr's diminutive love slave in the mean time)
Any government process that features the army forcing a president out on a plane in his pajamas is at least as unacceptable as a crooked election keeping one in power.
That's pretty much what they did according to their own constitution.
That is one funky constitution.
He was planning a contitutional change that the judges thought was unconstitutional, but since he hadn't even done the referendum, there was no basis for removing it at that point, if there were to be any to begin with.
Disposing of a lot of paper isn't hard at all, companies do it constantly without anyone noticing or caring.
Unless the company is under investigation, in which case a whole lot of people notice and care. And it's very often possible to find the people whose job it is and, with appropriate pressure, get them to admit what documents they were assigned to destroy.
Look, of course if the election is corrupt enough, it doesn't matter. The USSR held paper-ballot "elections" for seventy years in which the Communist candidates always got some randomly chosen but large percentage of the vote; everyone knew that had nothing to do with reality, but it wasn't like there was anything anyone could do about it. But if you have a country with a reasonably honest election system, the kind of petty vote-rigging that can throw a close election is a lot harder to get away with when there's a physical record. Preferably a large, bulky record that will take time to destroy, and real effort to tamper with in other ways.
I don't know anything about Honduran politics and don't claim to. But in the US, our preferred method of dealing with questionable elections is the recount. With paper ballots, this make sense, and you can bet the process will be closely watched; if there is serious ballot tampering going on, there's a good chance that someone will talk. With electronic results, what you basically get is, "We ran the query and it gave us the same count as last time -- imagine that!"
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Having shot people suspended liberties, imposed curfews and deposed an elected president, they couldn't possibly be lying -- really they would lie? And why would someone want to rig an election that was announced as not having the force of anything but advice? It was a vote about a "recommendation." Not a referendum that has the force of law like California. Of course, making talking about changing the law illegal surely doesn't say anything about the level of democracy allowed by the elites. Sorry this sounds like justification after the fact, for world denounced anti-democrats staging a military coup. Honduras =Iran
I'm betting they're prolly just from the future.
I've thought about this a lot and I think I've come up with a 99.9999999999% secure system. What we need is an encrypted means of verifying our vote after the fact and two receipts.
Then you could independently survey people's actual votes after the fact if people "exit poll" by dropping off their second official receipt. It would be completely anonymous and verifiable.
The receipt would be a 2D Barcode containing: Encrypted name and indicated vote.
You build a database of these encrypted names and votes which are double checkable when you get home or at booths run by party representatives with just an internet connection. Then everyone can check their vote. In order to avoid the government intentionally miscounting but correctly verifying your report you could provide the database after the fact to anyone interested. People could then verify their vote on a third party server as well.
Lastly the extra Exit Poll receipts could be entered into a database on the spot by the media to verify that there is no indication of tampering.
Electronic Voting COULD be easy and safe. It could also be safer, more transparent and reliable than paper ballots. If we just do it right.
(who had called for an illegal referendum to have term limits removed so he could basically be president for life) NO he did not. He wanted a non-binding referendum, on a constitutional congress, to be held after the elections in November. It would not have affected his term. He was arrested and deposed, for talking about it, they said. Since the coup they have come up with more reasons why a military coup was necessary, that sound a lot like Fox News. And allowing people to run twice or three time or four times means they are Senator Lugar capable of asking the voters if they still want an election. You know like everywhere else. Term limits, even in the US, is very rare. Why this means "basically for life" is beyond me.
Basic procedure for building important databases and data processing apps, is to fill it with test data. Some realistic, some not realistic, and some that should be impossible. See what happens before the system goes live.
I'm not seeing anything in this report that conclusively rules out the possibility this is test data. Though, I suppose something might have gotten lost in translation.
The Iraq elections show that the Americans are capable of running a fair and open election ... when their own lobbyists and political machines aren't involved.
Just a minute "lobbyist and political machines" -- Hmm, I'm getting redundant.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
I've noticed that any time Barry uses the phrase "Let there be no mistake" or "Make no mistake" or similar, it can be roughly translated, "I'm about to tell a huge lie."
Unfortunately, so can their abusive spouse ("vote like this or I will beat you black and blue"), their abusive boss ("vote like this or I will sack you"), their local mafia boss ("vote like this or you will be wearing concrete shoes") and the local freemasons lodge ("vote like this or we will ruin your business")
apart from that though, I find your ideas intriguing.. do you have a newsletter?
a military coup unofficially supported by the US,
US manufactured, voting machines
Interesting how you state two things here with no proof. Nor are either of these in any of the articles and the only one who has said it was "unofficially supported by the US" has been Hugo Chavez. Further, US President Obama has condemned the coup. Oh, and it didn't say that they were voting machines, either.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Which is why I think that any electronic voting system needs a voter verified printout of his/her selections which is the official ballot which is cast. The electronic vote tally is not the official count. The printed ballot could be easily coded so that an electronic counting machine could count the vote (something like an optical scanner, or more like a system which can photograph the ballot and pattern match/color code the vote results). In any case, you have a physical medium which was verified by the voter as the official document. You gain the usability benefits of the electronic system in terms of how you select your vote and still keep the integrity of the paper ballet system by having lasting physical media which can not be easily corrupted as the true ballet.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I'm sorry, but after the president's ouster it's entirely possible that the coup plotters created these bogus results on the machines. Unfortunately no 3rd party will be allowed to see if the machines were hacked to produce this result, or the ousted government actually tried to rig the elections.
In other words the evidence is questionable both ways.
The de facto government in Honduras is looking for pretexts to justify their takeover of power. More than the "Chávez spin" on this coup d'etát, the new govenment has made more than enough proofs that what they are doing is illegal:
-They created a fake letter of resignation the same day that Congress designated the current de facto president, Roberto Micheletti
-The top legal officer of the Army stated that what they did to the president Zelaya was ilegal.
This election was no legally binding, the incentive to fake results was low. At best, a win for president Zelaya only would have strengtened a little his political position on his last months of being president, since for everyone would have been clear that this poll had the same statistical value than slasdot polls.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
There are such systems - "Chaum's Visual Electronic Voting", for example. They also have a nice property - you can't use your receipt as a proof that you voted 'the right way'.
The real question is did the votes make it to Karl Rove's IT manager's server before they were counted? After all, that might appear to be suspicious, you know, if the guy died in a plane crash before he testified.
This smoking gun says that the endless political correctnes that is the USA, today, managed to get a simple issue __wrong__ again, Manuel Zelaya was democratically elected but as with many other countries and leaders, he was in the middle of destroying his country's democracy when ousted. That the undemocratic shills at the UN would oppose was expected, see what they have done about Kaunda, but that the US and Europe would follow is amazing.
... and now Honduras.
What is needed is Congressional term limits in the USA, not their abolition in Honduras.
Now that Chavez has got his way in Venezuela he will be a pain for generations just as Castro was. Every time
This must be the makings of a world record for wrongheadedness and stupidity by both parties in the US, Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan
There must be a very strong case for retiring entirely all staff at Foggy Bottom and Langly and starting again, Wild Bill anyone?, since they always pick the wrong side. Now we risk forcing the population of yet another mid-american country the delights of a corrupt socialist government paradise run by an idiot.
> eVoting CAN and WILL happen.
It may come, but it will come over my cold dead body.
> ..every voter must have its own private key... [lots of useless tech details clipped]
The problem is with the tech. You, me and at least 10% of the nerds here on Slashdot could design an evoting system that would be technically perfect. And still spell the final death of our Republic because of the non-technical flaws that can't be fixed with tech.
Problem one. Take away the secret ballot (i.e. the voting booth) and it is 100% certain that vote buying, voter intimidation and many other evils will follow. No ballot cast over the Internet can be proven to be secret. Note that this defect exists with absentee and general mail in balloting as well. Mailed in absentee ballots generally don't decide elections and can be accepted as a compromise. General mail in elections are inherently corrupt.
Problem two. You will never design an electronic system that is 100% proof against fraud. It is doubtful one can be designed as resistant to fraud as paper ballot counted in the open with observers from all camps present.
> Voting could then be extended to government actions that currently skip the peoples' opinion.
You are describing Democracy. And the Founders were aware of this system of government and rightly rejected it as proven by history to be madness. We were instead given a Constitutional Republic. I have seen nothing to indicate the current government educated masses possess such an advanced level of civic virtue as to justify a reevaluation of their verdict on the subject.
Democrat delenda est
So is easier to force people to vote for the "correct" guys in office. This is a real trouble in all the places where the votes are casted without secrecy, like workers unions and certain polical parties; at least, here in Mexico elections for most union leaders and primaries in many political parties are done this way. Is no wonder that we have ended with hereditary position "workers leaders" and the same corrupt people in Congress time after time.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Why do they need to be mostly _hidden_? It's just that systems today, made by private corporations, are hidden. They can be made to be more open to the public, while retaining security. It is easier to tamper with electronic votes, but at the same time it should be easier to track tampering with those same electronic votes if the system was open and available for the public to monitor.
*DrugCheese rants*
Don't find surprising that Chavez told Zelaya how to perpetually win an "Democratic Election" based on his personal ideals, Latelly all Latinamerica is getting a way to much facist when it comes to eagerly turn every country into socialist (by the force) and stomping people's free will of free choice.
with the right access (oh, i forgot, government bureaucrats are hard to bribe) can, in 33 milliseconds, change more ballots, invisible to audit, statistically untraceable, than an army of ballot box stuffers can do in 33 days (and of course, conspiracies of thousands of ballot box stuffers is always airtight)
now, also think about the attack vectors: for every scheme you can tell me for altering paper ballots, i can tell you 10 schemes for altering electronic ballots
that you can alter paper ballots is no argument against paper ballots, and that's the only point you made with your comment. electronic voting is inherently and irreducibly less secure than paper ballots, and hell of a lot more expensive, so what is the damn point of electronic ballots again? other than to sow seeds of doubt and destroy the legitimacy of a government? pffffffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The 2nd amendment is very, very important, since it keeps open the possibility of a citizen melitia,
ONE of the things you have to understand about using the military to coerce your own population to fire on their friends or fellow citizens because if they wont you end up with a mutiny as well,
as to stealth bombers, and nukes, they are useless and would not be countenanced within continental NORAM, you need a rifleman, eg the US MARINES, and good luck with even getting the senior officers to order lethal fire, and even more with getting the order obeyed.
Term limits for the country's leader are not rare. He attempted to call a referendum directly, when it is stated that he does not have the power to do that in the local constitution; the courts and the legislature refused to have such a referendum when asked. This is what makes it illegal - he does not legally have the power to call such a referendum.
Is it any surprise that he was ousted? And is it any surprise that the referendum never happened and yet the results are sitting on the servers?
is 100% accurate
and yet every single style of government other than democracy has weaknesses far worse than democracy
therefore, you embrace democracy, with all the flaws you mentioned. please note that next time you go on this tirade
and yes, government geeks, i understand the difference between a democracy and a republic, but the spirit of this man's post goes far beyond that difference, and directly attacks the legitimacy of consulting the people's will, that's what is wrong with his comment
so no one misses the damn fucking point: democracies manufacture legitimacy. when you consult the will of the people, the people are happy. legitimacy allows for stability, which allows for economic growth, security, education, etc. ANY other style of government decays in legitimacy over time, as the agenda of the people and the agenda of those entrusted to rule the people, for whatever aribtrary reason, begins to drift apart. this appies to technocrats in beijing or theocrats in tehran strong men in harare or kleptocratic generals in yangon
as soon as you tell me the people of a country are stupid and not to be entrusted and you need some special class of people who are better at judging what is good for the people than the peopl themselves, you have just committed a crime of stupidity worse than the worst mob rule and tyranny of the majority you can imagine. please make sure your comment, next time you post it or think it, which is a gateway to aristocratic thought, takes note of what history has taught us about a special class of people that are supposedly wiser than the people themselves. french revolution anyone?
elitist assholes are far worse than mob rule, and your comment stinks of it. all of the flaws of democracy are no worse than the flaws of any other style of government. note that, and don't give me your fucking geek comment "republics are not democracies", i fucking understand that already. the problem is with arguing against the will of the people as the foundation of a government and a society. nothing should break that. nothing. or whatever you have is far worse
elitist assholes are far worse than mob rule, and your comment stinks of it. beware when you begin to distrust the people's will. you are the one has a problem at that point, not the people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You can't have people leave with the receipt or able to check their vote afterwards. If you leave with the receipt, the thug that has kidnapped your dog or promised you a reward for your vote can check your vote.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
One should of course take such breaking news reports with a grain of salt till confirmed, one could imagine this being some sort of misinterpretation of the observations (e.g. maybe those were early voting ballots??), Moreover this is hondouras.....as I'm sure other posters will talk about.
IN any case assuming the report is correct, it's critical contextual significance is thus:
One of the big strawmen often raised by folks in favor of electronic voting is that there is this supposed panacea called "parallel testing" that is touted as being an invincible process of detecting rigged machines. The idea is that at random a machine will be chosen before the elections begin and pulled out of service, then the election workers will cast pretend votes on it all day long. then it's output checked for accuracy. This is called "parallel" testing because it's done in a time period parallel to a real election, supposedly to "fool" any date dependent software. It's not an awful idea and would indeed detect some kinds of naive electronic fraud. But the idea that this is remotely a solution is even more naive.
Moreover, said proponents don't actually ever do this--- it's just a thought experiment. The real reason for that strawman argument is not that people would actually would do it, it's that since you could in principle do it, this keeps that bad guys at bay. Ha Ha Ha.
So it's such a terrible irony then that the very first time in history that, effectively a different kind of parallel test did occur, that yep massive machine rigging is found!
the parallel test in this case is: call an election. cancel it unexpectedly at the last possible second and impound the machines, test them for rigging.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Fuck Zelaya, and all the leftist leaders upset by this, including Obama, Chavez, and Castro.
Honduras proved they have a set of balls and aren't going to get pushed around by communists. More power to them.
They did the right thing, just wish they had thrown Zelaya in jail for the rest of his life rather than exile him.
Quite an interesting solution to a problem that shouldn't exist.
This is only a problem in the US because you insist on voting for everything from dogcatcher to President on one day. No wonder it takes time to tabulate. Here in Canada, when we have a federal election, it's a federal election. I can concentrate on the candidates in my riding, and the policies of the various federal parties, and make a choice. Same thing when it's a provincial election. The only time we get multiple ballots is municipal elections, when you might be voting for a mayor, a local councilor, and a school trustee.
Balloting ends at 8 pm local time, and the results are usually known within two hours. Some very close seats may require a recount, and if the results are close enough, a losing candidate can require a second recount. But I can't remember a single time in my life when I went to bed without knowing who'd won.
And, as others have noted, each party sends a "scrutineer" to the counting process. Although the actual counts are performed by Elections Canada official (non-partisan in theory), each party can have a person present to challenge rejected or unclear ballots.
I would fight like hell against any attempt to replace this simple, workable, verifiable solution with electronic voting which could easily be subject to manipulation, just so we could know the results an hour sooner.
What was once true, is no longer so
At ${provider}, we guarantee we'll elect the winners, every time!
I have found an article where a constitutional lawyer, who hails from Honduras, explains what happened and why it happened. My best guess analysis mirrors just about exactly what he is saying. There is fault on both sides, but their constitution clearly states not only is it illegal to try and change the one term limit, but it is a crime to even propose it! I didn't know that part.
His own political party, who control the legislature there, voted overwhelmingly for his ouster. Their attorney general ordered the referendum halted, but he was trying to go ahead with it anyway, just by calling it "an opinion poll", just some weasel words. By their law, he shouldn't have been deported (that's the only thing they did technically illegal), but immediately should have been jailed, but they decided it was better to break that one law to avoid mass bloodshed. They estimated if he was still in-country, there just would have been a big bloody mess, and they didn't want that, the rock and the hard place scenario, or what I called picking the lesser of two suckages.
Here is the article Miguel Estrada: 'Honduran Ouster of Zelaya was Constitutional'
" Maybe this whole thing is a fabrication to make the ousted president look even more corrupt than he really was? "
Gosh. Who would do a thing like *that* ?
Need Mercedes parts ?
Better: http://www.usenix.org/event/evt07/tech/full_papers/riva/riva_html/
Need Mercedes parts ?
Nobody in his/her right mind should ever endorse computer-only voting or vote-counting. That is a path to madness and rioting. However, with a verifiable mixture of both paper and electronic voting, we could make everybody happy. Proposal: (1) When a citizen votes during an election, as the paper vote is dropped into the ballot box it is simultaneously scanned by an computer reader which is networked to central tabulation HQ.(If the vote cannot be read, it is not accepted into the ballot box) (2) When voting is finished, all voting staff and political party staff (from all parties running) get instant "un-official" print-outs of voting, with results described by each ballot box, across the entire voting area. Also, these "un-official" election results are posted online the very second voting ends. Ballot boxes with paper votes are securely locked down, as always. (3) Before results of the election can be officially announced, two more things must happen: i)a random sample of a significant proportion of ballot boxes must be counted by hand, and verified to be equal to or very, very close to what the "un-official" electronic results were, which were already posted online for each ballot box. ii)every party running in the election is allowed to request an official hand-count of a generous proportion of ballot boxes, at places of their choosing, with hand-count results to be verified against the original "un-official" electronic results. (4) If in step (3) above any of the hand-counting for any single ballot box is off from what the "un-official" electronic tally originally had reported, the electronic results are deemed VOID and completely thrown out. At this point, ALL paper ballots go to be hand-counted, to get the true election outcome. These steps should ensure as verifiable results as we have had with paper-only counting. However, it should cost a lot less this way to conduct elections, as much fewer votes need to be counted (unless the electronic results are off, in which case more money for counting paper votes is the least of the government's problems). Arguably, these steps may also result in official election results being released to the public faster. Electronic voting can be helpful, but let me re-emphasize what I said in the beginning: The day we allow government elections to go electronic-only is the day we ALL lose democracy.
After the "interesting" US results, Diebold renamed itself to Premier Election Solutions.
In short, same sh*t, different name..
Insert
to get Jimmy Carter to certify the results. Whether the election actually took place is irrelevant.
Here, if it was Zelaya doing it (so far, we don't have any concrete evidence to point to who's responsible), he needed an overwhelming support. Remember he keeps repeating that this was nonbinding, i.e. for gathering the opinion of the people. If even a significant minority was opposed to the repeal of term limit, then he couldn't push through the constitution change. He needed an overwhelming support to argue for another referendum which would be binding at that point.
I have seen no proof of voting fraud to elect G.W. Bush. Several newspapers (that overwhelmingly supported Al Gore) did recounts of the Florida 2000 ballots and found that G.W. Bush won the Florida election by any reasonable method of recounting (the only method of recounting that gave Florida to Gore was if one gave him the votes from every ballot that was less than perfectly clear as to who was intended--even when there was no indication that they intended to vote for Gore).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You must mean hundred percent, that is what you get when there are only candidates from the communist party.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
No, the army seized him and drove him in his pajamas to the airport. Then wouldn't let him back, even in the company of the UN, the OAS, and other Latin American presidents.
That's not anything like impeachment. That's a textbook coup d'etat, even if he pissed people off enough to bring it on. Pissed some people off. And then the coup pissed a lot more people off, worldwide.
Chavez has nothing to do with it. Unless of course all you can see in this world is "with us or against us", and are still too attached to Bush's BS to actually care about the rule of law.
--
make install -not war
A seen on The People's Cube:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The USSR cheated the simplest way, they just decided who would be on the ballot. Then everyone got to vote for that person.
Makes counting easier I guess.
Patently and mathematically false.
The fact that both of those actions could fail means that it is less statistically likely that both will be true, even if one is given to be true.
Every effort taken to make rigging difficult WILL succeed, in some small manner, in discouraging that behavior, if only because it becomes more difficult..
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Actually, a parallel test would be easily defeatable.
Simple have special vote, one that is unlikely in the real world such as voting for a Socialist president candidate and a Libertarian senator, and unlikely candidates for a dozen other races, trigger some hidden instruction to alter 15% of the vote for that election.
Also have it the triggered machine mark each 'ballot card' that comes though, which then triggers every other machine to start doing the same thing when that card is placed in another machine.
Then simply have voters in on the fraud, one at each precinct, come in early in the morning and vote that way. The trigger would rapidly spread to all machine, randomly altering 15% of each vote cast, but this would never happen in any of the tests.
If you want to be more sure it won't happen in a test, put a check that if someone does a different irrational voting pattern, one that is close to the actual trigger but not exactly, it will totally disable the trigger, even if someone later gets it right. Which will make it extremely unlikely random random testing will happen to hit on the correct trigger first.
Yeah, some mistakes will get made and someone will screw up putting in the trigger by accident, but they'd do that anyway. And some people won't show up, or they'll make it at 2 in the afternoon. But if 95% of the precincts are shifted one way, and 5% are left at the original place, they aren't going to be looking for fraud in the 95% places.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I agree with the post "Opposition Faked it to ciminalize [sic] him", the coup plotters are doing what the can to discredit the Zelaya administration. In the two weeks that they have taken control of the executive branch of the government (they already had control of the legislature and judicial system) they are finding out all kinds of things that the Zelaya government supposedly did. None of these things are being done in a transparent or internationally valid manner. What those in power are trying to do is to obfuscate any possibility of a negotiated solution. While it is mentioned that all this was precipitated by a survey to see if a question could be included in the general election ballot regarding the creation of a constitutional assembly sometime in 2010 (there was no possibility of modifying the constitution prior to the end of Zelaya's term since the elections for president would have taken place well before the constitutional assembly).
What many of us who study Central America suspect (and with good information from many of the principal players on the ground) is that this was an excuse for the ruling elites of Honduras to allow the military to deport the president and many around him, including the minister of foreign affairs, Patricia Rodas who might very soon be a presidential contender, and more importantly, has openly advocated for a weakened military that at the moment operates largely as an autonomous institution. The military has been in the business of running Honduras for decades after deposing the Liberal government of Villeda Morales sending him into exile along with the president of the congress Modesto Rodas, father of Patricia Rodas (Mr. Rodas occupied the same position Mitcheletti held until a few days ago, except that the military did not see him as an ally and sent him to Costa Rica, much in the same way they sent Mr. Zelaya. btw. the "hat" Mr. Zelaya wears is a symbol that represents Modesto Rodas, who died in 1979, but is still a strong presence in Honduran politics).
But how does the military operate with the elite families? Who is in control? The military high command is in tight association with the elite families that have the greatest share of the economic interests in the country (and plenty of bank accounts and investments overseas). These families and the military have business relationships in common--in fact they are undistinguishable since not only are they linked through economic interests, they are tightly integrated through family ties that overlap different sectors (public, private and military). And who are these families?
From what I can discern they are: Canahuati Larach: textiles, pharmaceuticals, banking, soft drinks and media [La Prensa, El Nuevo Dia, El Heraldo]. Facusse: textiles, pharmaceuticals, agro, telecom, banking, construction, media [La Tribuna]. Nasser: telecom. Kafati: agro, pharmaceuticals, coffee and casinos. CarriÃn, commerce (shopping malls). Ferrar: media. Agurcia: hotels, telecom and shipping. Faraj: banking, television, and commerce. Arévalo: electricity. Kafie: milk products and electricity. Rosenthal (who are pro-Zelaya): airlines, banking, media [Tiempo]. Goldstein banking. Kawas Sikafie: construction, cement, media, commerce. Andonie FernÃndez: real estate, pharmaceuticals.
The above list is only a very partial listing of their holdings. Also one has to keep in mind that the coup was leadered by a number of individuals with quite checkered pasts, including Billy Joya, who is now a security advisor to Mitcheletti, but in the 1980s was a founding member of the 3-16 battalion, a death squad, responsible for the disappearances of over 184 individuals. He has also been rumored to be connected to the Cali cartel (though this last allegation is a bit hard to prove since they don't leave much of a paper trial).
This is just a small bit of the story, it gets really strange as one finds out more about the details.
Compared to the usual manner of getting 9 out of the 5 votes that matter.
Then using the military to quash dissent. This appears to be the proven method.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I guess you missed that part where *members of his own party* voted overwhelmingly to oust him, THEY didn't approve of what he was doing. Also the judges said what he was trying to do was illegal, and etc.
The last thing any of those nations down there is yet another el jefe for life, they've had and still have in some situations enough of those sort of gents.
So nope, if these are the facts as reported so far, I don't think he needs any support, other than perhaps a good lawyer talking to him in his jail cell back home.
Other than that, I got no dog in this fight, I am a neoisolationist practically when it comes to these sort of things. It's up to those folks to sort their own problems out, and since they got rid of the last military dictatorship they have been pleased with having some more rational and fair government, and they purposefully put in those provisions for ONE term precisely to keep it that way, no if's, and's or but's about it. He was trying to change that, and the bulk of the government there agreed, saw that this was blatantly just wrong, so they nipped his little power grab gambit right in the bud.
... SkyNet candidates win in a landslide.
Have gnu, will travel.
As I understand it the president in question was "ousted" by legal proceedings before the country's supreme court, brought by their legislature in the proper constitutional manner. Then their military followed the proper procedure to implement the decision.
It's as if a US president were impeached, tried, and convicted, his proper successor took over, and the military, police, and bureaucracy all acknowledged this and followed the legal orders of the new president.
A coup, on the other hand, is a takover of a country by a faction of the military, outside of normal legal proceedings (though they generally make some mouth noises about it being the right, proper, and allegedly temporary thing to do - the better to keep theose supporting the ousted government off balance.)
So will everybody on slashdot (or at least the bulk of us who have a clue) PLEASE stop calling it a COUP?
Yes I know our own press and government are using the C-word. But WE know better, don't we.
Thank you.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And it was a good rationale...when the populace was armed with muskets, and the government was armed with muskets.
Actually, at the time the population was armed with accurate-at-a-distance RIFLES (compared to the Brits' smoothbores), cannon, warships (merchant ships often carried cannon to fend off pirates and military ships of other countries).
Which doesn't really matter. Because you can't stop a bullet with a bigger bullet.
The "liberator" pistol was a one-shot (and unscrew parts to reload) "zip gun". Made mostly of cheap stamped parts at a cost of under $10 it was air dropped by the thousands into German occupied areas in WW II. It came with a handgrip full of extra rounds and an instruction manual in comic book form:
- Here's how to load and fire it.
- Sneak up on the German soldier.
- Shoot him point-blank.
- Take HIS rifle and ammo.
- Give the Liberator and the remaining rounds to another resistance fighter who doesn't have a gun yet.
Now the populace is armed with, at best, assault rifles, and the government is armed with tanks.
Tanks without infantry support are cans of soldiers waiting to be cooked. Tanks WITH infantry support are crowds of soldiers waiting to be shot, blown up, burned, gassed, ...
A good varmint gun qualifies as an exceptional sniper rifle. A shotgun at appropriate ranges is more firepower against advancing troops - though for a shorter time - than a machine gun.
But if the US government came against its own people you can bet that a bunch of 'em will honor their oaths to the constitution over orders. Think large-scale desertion and coat-turning WITH equipment. Opening of the armories for the population. Lots of ex-military, reserve, and state militia types (with THEIR armories full of stuff - including the tanks you're so concerned about) will be out on a constitutional side, too.
A determined population armed with a few guns can eventually prevail. (Even with a VERY few VERY low power guns they can do quite well. The starving denizens of the Warsaw Ghetto held off the bulk of the German Army for better than a week starting with a dozen handguns and sporting rifles.)
As to capabilities: The typical private gun owner who practices occasionally can shoot rings around the typical non-SWAT policeman.
The Second Amendment isn't just about making it possible for the people to resist the tyranny that the founders thought any government would gravitate toward. It's to make the population's advantage SO OVERWHELMING that no government official could delude himself that he might be able to win.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... peculiarly, the Honduran Constitution does not include an impeachment procedure
But it does specify that anyone who advocates or takes steps to modify the portion of the constitution immediately loses any government office he holds and is banned from holding a government office for ten years.
This is what Zelaya did. The head of his party called for his ouster and the Supreme Court ruled that he was in violation of this section and no longer the President.
Even if the steps weren't explicitly laid out in advance this sounds like a constitutional impeachment procedure to me.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But it does specify that anyone who advocates or takes steps to modify the portion of the constitution ...
limiting the president to a single term ... immediately loses any government office he holds and is banned from holding a government office for ten years.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I can't help but ask if one of the reasons this bit of news has not been published is that it has not come from a trustworthy source. What better way to discredit an ousted politician than for the new government to discover obvious signs of corruption? Also, the numbers cited in the article as the fake results are not very believable, with each value ending in 0. If you were to fake election results, wouldn't you try just a bit harder? (This is not to say that this bit of news might not be true, or that Zelaya might not be guilty of corruption, but that we ought to take such convenient news with a grain of salt).
By the time you get an electronic system where:
0) The election can be fair and be understood as fair enough (especially by the average voter)
1) Independent+Party representatives can verify with high certainty that the counting starts from zero (boxes are empty)
2) Independent+Party observers can observe that it's one person one vote.
3) Independent+Party observers can keep watch over the storage (and the transportation if necessary - preferable that the ballots aren't moved, but sometimes there's no choice) to help ensure that tampering is hard.
4) Independent+Party observers can observe the counting[1]
5) The voting remains anonymous (I personally don't think this is that important, but lots of people seem to believe it is).
You'll probably have something that looks very much like a paper voting system, only a lot more expensive and complex. How is it going to be different AND better?
Do show me how you can have a electronic voting system that satisfies all that and will be better and cheaper.
[1] Over here as part of the count process, the counters will lift the paper ballot up to let everyone around who is interested to look at it. The different parties can have their own people tallying up the votes themselves. So far over here the complaints are mainly about postal votes (which e-voting has the same probs with), and the bribing of _voters_ by politicians.
Regarding the vote buying, if the voters think that it's better to get some of their money back upfront rather than get some other benefit via big promises that's up to them.
.... nope not in the U.S. but in Venezuela. Come to think of it, I saw it again in 2001 and 2002 too. Then after some thinking about it in a cell in Maiqeutia, I decided that I didn't want to see it again in 2003, 2004, etc... I'm surprised Jimmy Carter hasn't stepped up to "certify" this election as well.
It sucks to be nothing more than a mere citizen in these situations, and have to endure watching these manipulators use everyone else for their own purposes, doesn't it? We here in the U.S. know how it feels, lately because of Bush and Cheney, but personally I don't think it's over with Obama in office....
Fuck you, Hugo. Death to all collectivists.
Too much Law; not enough Order.
George Bush narrowly defeated a dastardly plot by Democrat thugs to steal the 2000 election. And the 2004 election was not even in the same ballpark; Bush legitimately thrashed Kerry. I like to think that the spectacle of Dan Rather and his minions trying to throw the election with forged documents may have made up the margin of victory.
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Paper ballots, but prefabricated results. (With many jurisdictions turning out many more votes than voters, and in many cases preliminary reports coming out almost the opposite of the final reports.)
I wonder if this is becoming an industry.
Go see how paper voting is done in various countries and you can see it's really hard to rig in some countries, and easier in other countries (ballot boxes are moved, counting is done in secret by one organization).
This is one of the suspicious aspects of the Iranian elections, actually. They were supposed to have various of the standard safeguards (observers from all parties at polling stations, votes counted locally with the observers presents, etc). These weren't followed in the last elections.
Corporations as elected officials? Don't give them any ideas!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
One hundred million people slaughtered and you get lost when someone calls that "evil"?
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Leftist ousted by CIA-backed coup, plain and simple. they are really getting their game back. After Iran they must be feeling their oats, who knows, maybe they can oust Chavez, or, dare they dream, topple Castro?
look sig is kool
time for YOU to get a clue, it was a COUP... a Ft Benning special.
look sig is kool
Now that Chavez has got his way in Venezuela he will be a pain for generations just as Castro was.
Unlike Castro, Chavez has been elected and re-elected in fair elections. Chavez did propose the elimination of term limits, but the public rejected it in a referendum he has agreed to honor.
So by "got his way" you mean "got elected and democratically pursued reforms"? The tyrant!
Citation? The major study I'm familiar with, performed by a consortium of major media outlets -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12623-2001Nov11.html -- found that a statewide recount of the votes would have Gore the winner.
[1] He NEVER mentioned reelection. NEVER. [2] It wasn't a referendum. It was an opinion survey. It had no official function of any kind. It was a question about how people would feel about putting a hypothetical question on the November ballot. [3] Neither the Supreme Court or congress has any constitutional authority to remove a sitting president. Article 239 does say that anyone who proposes reelection extending the presidential term ceases functioning as president. It does not establish any procedure for enforcing this. [4] The Supreme Court did not mention Article 239 in its order, although it is festooned with other constitutional and legal references. It ordered the army to arrest Zelaya and bring him before a magistrate. The army ignored the order and illegally deported him instead. They also forged a letter of resignation and claimed he was resigning for reasons of health. This was probably a polite way of saying that health can be harmed by a bullet to the back of the head. [5] Zelaya had full legal and constitutional authority to fire the army chief of staff. [6] Competent legal experts in Honduran constitution law argue that Zelaya never technically violated the injunctions against distributing the opinion survey because the decree by Congress had never been published in the official government gazette and therefore was not effective, and also because it did not apply to an opinion survey (not mentioned in the decree) but a referendum (specifically mentioned). [7] The computers were probably being set up to tabulate the opinion survey, not a trivial process for millions of votes. a. This had to be done from scratch by technicians from project 'Learn' of the Honduran Council on Science and technology aimed at rural schools because the National Research Institute had declined to tabulate the poll. b. The government investigator produced exactly one tabulation with admittedly absurd figures, which would lead any sane observer to conclude that they were dummy figures. c. Why would technicians carrying out a slick fraud make up more voters than existed in a well-known town? Because they weren't carrying out a slick fraud. They were making up stuff to see how the tabulation system worked. The "incriminating" evidence was a document with header information "Test spreadsheet." Yep. That's prima facie evidence of fraud right there. Think of it. A test spread sheet. Bad stuff. Very bad stuff. I mean it was probably Excel. How much more evil can it get than that? [8] Zelaya had absolutely nothing to gain personally from the proposed constitutional convention because: a. It would take place long after he was out of office. b. It could not even raise the topic of reelection because the old constitution forbidding that would still be in force. [9] The issues that were going to be raised at the proposed constitutional convention had to with long-standing sore points such as land tenure by indigenous peoples, military immunity from prosecution, broadening the people's role in Honduran democracy and other topics. You can read my full report on the controversy on Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jules-siegel/honduras-supreme-court-it_b_230621.html Now all who come after me in this thread are hereby enjoined from repeating the totally discredited claims under threat of maximum punishment that shall be carried out by the competent authorities without let or mercy or further review. SO LET IT BE WRITTEN. SO LET IT BE DONE.
Chavez will continue to put Venezuela's economy even further in the crapper.
It's only a question of when he hangs from a street light. He can only rig so many elections before it's laughably obvious.
Cubans would have ousted Fidel decades ago absent Soviet financial and military support.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is completely ludicrous! And its marked insightful! I am completely amazed! It doesnt even make sense! Your facts are not correct and the logic is unsound even if the facts were right. The law they say he broke, say, is trying to change the law to run again. Not calling a referendum. He has the power to call a non-binding referendum, it is specifically called for in the laws, under the section on Participation. They say his attempting to hold a non-binding referendum "was an attempt to change the law to run again" as if a non binding referendum was a change of law. Its like arresting soemone for taking a poll. AM I surprised he was ousted? Yes. Because it was a military coup, with public relations people being paid to fill the internet and lobby congress. Strip the military government of all aid and re-instate democracy, send the troops back to barracks.
There is no reason for the populace to have semi-automatic weapons, since any single-shot pistol will do?
paintball
The voting remains anonymous (I personally don't think this is that important, but lots of people seem to believe it is).
Of course its important, otherwise voter intimidation, as well as buying votes become much more serious problems.