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Microsoft Will Help Iowa Caucuses Go High-Tech
jfruh writes: Poltical party caucuses are one of the quirkier aspects of American political life: local party members gather in small rooms across the state, discuss their preferences, and send a report of how many delegates for each candidate will attend later county and statewide caucuses to ultimately choose delegates to the national convention. It's also a system with a lot of room for error in reporting, as local precinct leaders have traditionally sent in reports of votes via telephone touch-tone menus and paper mail. In 2016, Microsoft will help both Democrats and Republicans streamline the process in a fashion that will hopefully avoid the embarrassing result from 2012, when Mitt Romney was declared the winner on caucus night only for Rick Santorum to emerge as the true victor when all votes were counted weeks later.
Let's see the hackers arrange for Bill Gates to get 100% of the votes; maximum embarrassment all round...
Des Moines, Feb. 26, 2016 - Officials from the Federal Election Commission have descended upon the capitol today after a bank of Microsoft-supplied vote tracking machines declared Free Software Foundation President Richard M. Stallman to be the undisputed winner of the 2016 Iowa Caucuses. Stallman, who won a record-breaking 100% of the vote, told journalists that he welcomes the results even though he had not previously declared himself as a candidate for the presidency. Stallman has already issued a statement declaring that if he is elected, "2017 will truly be the Year of the Linux Desktop."
Federal officials have insisted that the voting machines were somehow hacked, potentially by terrorists associated with The SCO Group, a former Unix developer infamous for years of frivolous lawsuits over the ownership of Linux. One official, speaking on condition that his name would not be published, said that The SCO Group had left "footprints" in the code used to hack the machines. "It was the strangest calling card we've ever seen," the official said, "When we looked at the code, half of it was the words "PWNZORED BY SCO" over and over again. Given the patterns we've seen with ISIS and Al-Qaeda, we can assume this is a terrorist group taking responsibility for the attack."
Locals in Iowa, however, believe the results to be legitimate. Several residents told reporters that "The results can't be any more corrupt than they already were" and "At least we won't have to listen to all those conspiracy posts on Slashdot if Hilary loses."
A spokesperson from Microsoft declined to comment on this story, saying "Bill's absolutely livid right now. The machines were supposed to glitch and give him 100% of the vote.. I mean, ensure a fair and accurate balance in making sure every vote counts. Needless to say, we are looking into it."
vote Cthulhu. why choose the lesser evil