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ES&S To Buy Diebold, Blackbox Voting To Sue
Gottesser writes "Long-time election rights activist Bev Harris (she had an HBO special a while back where she hired Hari Hursti to hack an optical scan voting machine) just sent this out: 'Diebold/Premier Election Systems is being purchased by Election Systems & Software (ES&S). According to a Black Box Voting source within the companies, there will be a conference call among key people at the companies within the next couple hours. An ES&S/Diebold-Premier acquisition would consolidate most US voting under one privately held manufacturer. And it's not just the concealed vote-counting; these companies now also produce polling place check-in software (electronic pollbooks), voter registration software, and vote-by-mail authentication software.' Our voting system is heading toward a server-centric model with our vote being delivered to us by computers under lock and key far away from public oversight. Here's ES&S's press release. Wikipedia's got something on the ongoing string of ES&S controversies as well."
This should force the FEC to outright ban electronic voting. I guess my .sig is getting old by now.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Are the only way to be sure, otherwise the voter cannot verify that what they choose is what got entered into the system. Even if it's an electronic system that prints out a receipt that you can then visually check and deposit would be fine (although personally I prefer the low tech ballot + make an X, it's simple, it's easy to assist blind people, and it's _trivial_ to check, if you have scrutineers from more than one party you're pretty safe (who watches the watchers? the watchers watch themselves because they want to make sure they aren't cheating). This system works for most of the world (including the US until recently). This love with high tech voting is quite scary I think (I especially love the argument that electronic voting is faster when you consider the court cases that have been needed t decide various elections).
All the ingredients necessary and sufficient to engineer an election result undetectably and without pesky statistical red flags. George Orwell himself couldn't have designed a more riggable system.
Say goodbye to democracy.
I can see the fnords!
Washington DC
October 1, 2009
In a stunning display of bipartanship today, Congress saved the taxpayers several million dollars by suspending all future elections. Proponents of the bill point out that most people didn't even bother to vote last time, and that of those who did, polls show the overwhelming majority of them held strong opinions about issues they didn't even begin to understand.
"It was a ridiculous waste of the taxpayer's money," said Sam Rickenbaugh of the GAO. "We'd spend millions, billions even on holding elections, and the voters who even bothered to show up were the same mouth-breathing idiots who get roped into jury duty. It was a pathetic display, embarrassing even."
Democrats and Republicans have agreed to share power across the aisle, and points of contention will now be decided based on who can gather the largest contributions for their side.
"Now this is Democracy," posts John Ringerton of My Country Right Or Wrong.com. "You got an opinion, you can put your money where your mouth is like God intended."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
No matter how bad things get, as long as we have honest elections, we have a chance to fix them. If we lose that ... forget it, it's over. Democrat, Republican, black, white, whatever: if the people in charge have the means to ensure they stay in charge regardless of the will of the people, they will use that power, and we are permanently screwed.
I hate to break it to you but they already have the means to remain in charge regardless of the will of the people. What good does an honest election do you when the politicians get to decide who their voters are instead of the other way around?
In short, AC, don't assume everyone else shares your level of asshole cynicism.
What's wrong with cynicism towards the political parties? They are all a bunch of lying hypocrites. You just feel good about yourself because the guy you regard as evil happened to lose. That doesn't change the fact that the two major parties are both propping up a system that undermines our representative republic and that the major difference between the two of them is which freedoms you'll lose when they are in charge.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
it does NOT MATTER that you feel you have inside info that the voting system is 'trustable'.
widespread, we (the people) don't trust it anymore. too many reports of bad things happening in the last few elections.
even if those are all made-up (and we know they are not); we need to have trust, first and foremost.
yes, sometimes you have to sell a car (or trade it in) just so you can know you'll not be stranded on the side of the road. we have a used car, now, so to speak; and we just don't trust it anymore.
paper (canada uses that!) is trustable.
open source is trustable.
the lying bastards who 'pledge all they can do' to ensure one candidate gets in; is NOT trustable! it does not matter if YOU, some elections guy, think its trustable. the rest of us lost that faith years ago.
to restore it, we need to go to low-tech methods. high tech is not always the answer. in this case, its the anti-answer.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."