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Will Hackers Try To Disrupt the Iowa Caucuses?
Hugh Pickens writes "The Iowa Republican Party is boosting the security of the electronic systems it will use to count the first votes of the 2012 presidential campaign after receiving a mysterious threat to its computers in a video urging its supporters to shut down the Iowa caucuses .... 'It's very clear the data consolidation and data gathering from the caucuses, which determines the headlines the next morning, who might withdraw or resign from the process, all of that is fragile,' says Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa who has consulted for both political parties. The state GOP fears such a delay could disrupt the traditional influence of Iowa's first-in-the-nation vote. 'With the eyes of the media on the state, the last thing we want to do is have a situation where there is trouble with the reporting system,' says Wes Enos, a member of the Iowa GOP's central committee. The GOP is encouraging party activists who run the precinct votes to use paper ballots instead of a show of hands, which has been the practice in some areas so the ballots can provide a backup in the event of any later confusion about the results. 'There is really only one way — and it needn't be a secret — to help assure that results cannot easily be manipulated by either Anonymous or by GOP officials themselves,' writes Brad Friedman. 'The hand-counted paper ballot system, with decentralized results posted at the "precincts," is the only way to try and protect against manipulation of the results from either insiders or outsiders.'"
But the Iowa caucus will say they did if Ron Paul ends up winning.
Iowa has electricity and computers? You really can make anything out of corn.
Caucuses are a bad idea to begin with. They value a better organized/paid for campaign over a better candidate. Also, why are Iowa and New Hampshire so special that they get to vote first and eliminate candidtes that may do better in other areas? The first primaries should be done on a rotating basis.
This year the GOP primary rules have changed to assign delegates proportionally instead of winner-take-all. This makes it much harder to get 50% of the delegates and win the nomination through the actual vote. Instead we'll likely end up with a brokered convention where the party leaders will elect whomever they want. This can effectively remove "undesirable" candidates whom the people want but the party doesn't (meaning Ron Paul).
The Republican party will make sure you don't receive the nomination.
Punish it for what it is: an attempted coup. Maybe this shouldn't count as "real voter fraud," but in general, democratic societies ought to punish organized voter fraud as a form of "attempting to overthrow the government." If the federal government were to hang a few people for attempting to systematically defraud the electorate, I think you'd see a lot fewer people willing to engage in the practice.
Why should the Iowa primary have verifiable paper ballots, so results can't be changed, and then have the entire main U.S. election be electronic with questionable machines that can be?
Not the exact answer to what you asked, but relevent to the question anyway:
Iowa's party-candidate-selection-system is a caucus, run by the parties. It is not a primary and is not run by the state. You gather at someone's house, rented hall, community center or wherever your party arranged for your precinct, cast a ballot and sit around arguing for your candidate(s) until someone gets a majority.
Caucuses seem to favor the most dedicated party members' votes, since it requires a bigger commitment from the voter than a primary.
I am not a crackpot.
The US is, and always has been, a Constitutional Federal Republic. It was never designed as a direct democracy and indeed has many provisions to prevent such a thing. The Constitution itself is one such thing. It is an undemocratic document. It is specifically designed to be hard to alter. You can't just have 50%+1 people vote to alter it, the process requires a much greater majority, and puts power in the hands ultimately of the states, not the people or the federal government.
I know that "undemocratic" is supposed to be a scare word that gets people to agree with you but when you look at things logically you discover that the US was never designed to be a direct democracy. Also looking at the way some things have gone, you can see how maybe that is a good thing. Something to be said for the fact that a simple majority of people can't just dictate to the minority how things will be done.
So yes, the American system isn't democratic, it is republican. Not in the sense of the political parties, but in the sense of the systems of government. It has a strong democratic tradition, more than many republics, but it is still a republic. What's more it is a republic of independent states meaning that there is a level of state autonomy.
If you don't like it that's fine but then what you have to propose is a constitutional amendment to more or less eliminate large parts of the Constitution. The only way the system could become a direct democracy would be to first alter the way the government works to a large degree and second to remove this super legal document that sits above other laws.
Such a thing could be done, but you are going to need to convince a lot of people, takes 75% of the states to amend the Constitution.