Slashdot Mirror
Green Party Calls For Recount, Wants To Push For Open-Source Voting Machines (nbcnewyork.com)
The Green party candidate in the U.S. presidential election, Jill Stein, has raised over $5 million in donations to fund a recount in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which are the states key to Hillary Clinton's loss on November 8th. She is seeking a recount in these three states after computer scientists discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e-voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: On November 23, the Stein/Baraka Green Party Campaign launched an effort to ensure the integrity of our elections," calling for "publicly-owned, open source voting equipment." In approximately 48 hours (as of 1:20pm EST (GMT-5) on Nov-25-2016) $5,026,516.15 has been raised to pay for a recount in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and [they are] currently collecting towards a recount in Michigan. The Green party also states: "The Green Party Platform calls for 'publicly-owned, open source voting equipment and deploy it across the nation to ensure high national standards, performance, transparency and accountability; use verifiable paper ballots; and institute mandatory automatic random precinct recounts to ensure a high level of accuracy in election results.'" More details can be read on MSNBC news. The Washington Post asks: Why are people giving Jill Stein millions of dollars for an election recount? UPDATE 11/25/16: Washington Examiner is reporting that Green Party officials have filed for a presidential vote recount in Wisconsin.
UPDATE 11/26/16: Hillary Clinton's campaign said Saturday that it will take part in the recount in Wisconsin.
UPDATE 11/26/16: Hillary Clinton's campaign said Saturday that it will take part in the recount in Wisconsin.
And an entirely different campaign will be accused of being a bad loser...
Still, if it's paid for, then it'll be worthwhile: It'll either increase confidence in the results (and maybe get some to accept their candidate lost), or it'll identify weakness that can be fixed.
I don't really expect it to change the results of the election - I'd bet faithless electors in the Electoral College is more likely to change the result than this.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
There is no way to verify the integrity of the machines on voting day, nor to safeguard the integrity of the polling data between the voting machine and the final tally. Open source means nothing here.
Electronic voting as a whole is a gigantic boondoggle. There are only three reasons for it to exist: People who are too impatient to wait for manual counting, people who are looking to make a tidy profit selling a broken solution to a problem that doesn't need solving, and people who are interested in a way to fuck with the polls without getting caught.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a slip of paper and a pen. Or have people dip their finger in ink like we've all seen done...
=Smidge=
Wow, 2000 called and wants it's anti-OSS argument back
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Unless he didn't. Let's find out and be sure.
Jill Stein is calling for recounts in three states where Hillary lost and not calling for recounts in New Hampshire, Minnesota & Nevada, three states where the results were even closer but in those states Hillary "won". Somehow Stein has gained more money for recounts ($4.7 m) than she managed to raise in her entire campaign ($3 m), even though clearly no Stein supporter believes that she will pick up enough votes to win any state. Gee Hillary, we wonder where all that money is coming from.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
yeah... its "over"... but they have the right to request the recount, so they are taking them up on that option.
And... it's not the dems requesting it, which is surprising.
Oh well, if the Greens want to waste their money, let them.
To the ACs whining about "They can't accept the outcome"... they are using legal avenues to make sure its right. It's not like the Greens are asking for special consideration because "AWMG RIGGED!!!"
Trump was crying like a 2 year old about everything (CROOKED, RIGGED, WAHH) was so unfair and as soon as he got his way, he smiled and sat contently in the corner. Just like a two year old that got his way.
Let them, they are allowed to request it and they did.
You can't expect the Alt-right to get hung up on little things like fact. REmember, we're in the post-truth era now.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Look at the Russian hacks, they were targeting the vote registration data. From that data you get the list of absentee voters and the list of habitual non-voters. When Florida is busy receiving all those faxed votes, it has no way of telling they come from a US military base in Afghanistan or a Russian propaganda base in Moscow. They simply don't validate the origin of absentee votes sent by post or fax.
Ohio didn't send out 1 million absentee ballots (the Republican governor withheld absentee ballots from people who moved within Ohio, i.e. renters not home owners), yet Ohio had a record year for absentee ballot voting.
And it was Russia:
http://time.com/4472169/russian-hackers-arizona-voter-registration/
"Russians Hacked Arizona Voter Registration Database -Official...Russians were responsible for the recent breach of Arizona’s voter registration system, the FBI told state officials in June. He said hackers gained access after stealing the username and password of an election official in Gila County, rather than compromising the state or county system."
This is Illinois's hack:
http://time.com/4471042/fbi-voter-database-breach-arizona-illinois/
Florida was also hit, and likely many more too.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/florida-election-hack/
"Feds believe Russians hacked Florida election-systems vendor"
here is another big problem "these three states after computer scientists discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e-voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots" Michigan Is a PAPER BALLOT state, we don't use e-voting machines here so their claim is baseless here. In PA you need to show proof of it and what they provided was nothing close to be counted as proof.
And... it's not the dems requesting it, which is surprising.
Fool. Stein has supposedly raised more money for this bogus recount which she can't win than she raised on her entire campaign. Only states that Trump won are being contested, not states that were even closer but Hillary supposedly won. Of course it is the Democrats (and Soros) behind this, Stein is just a shill because Hillary made such an issue of contesting an election not being "Presidential".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Yes, even more confusing. What, is she hoping to go from 1% of the vote to 1.1% of the vote? She was so far out of contention that even if her vote totals increased 2000% she'd still lose. So why is she doing this, unless it's a back-room deal to assist the 2nd place candidate - Hillary Clinton?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
There's no actual promise by the Green Party to actually spend that money on the recount effort.
For that matter, they shouldn't need to spend much money at all on it. So why is Stein asking for even more cash?
Oh, yeah. Graft. So, Jill, who gave you all of that money? Since it's a political campaign donation, I'm sure you kept track of the names of all of those donors, right? And you'll give it back if the recount fails?
What? No? What a shock...
Call me old-fashioned, but I think elections should be:
(1) held using pen and paper only (no electronic voting, no mail voting)
(2) on a Sunday (no conflict with work)
(3) require a photo ID
(4) stain people's right thumb to indicate that they have voted
Two other reforms:
(a) only citizens should count in the allocation of seats and electors
(b) congressional districts should be created algorithmically and have an upper limit on the ratio of the square of the boundary size of the district to the area of the district
Why are people giving Jill Stein millions of dollars for an election recount?
Because orange isn't green.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Not true at all.
This election was won by poll-shy white women. Look it up.
Also, look at 2008 and 2012.
Koch brothers poured money into those elections and lost.
Look up Clinton's spending vs. Trump's.
When money is used for a ground game, it works.
When it's used for ads, people go pee.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
So, maybe I'll do a blog post about this, but the data is surprisingly easy to find. Buffalo county, which uses exclusively e-voting touchscreen machines, and voted for Obama in 2012, ended up voting for Trump by a huge percentage in '16. La-fayette county, Obama '12, Trump '16, all e-voting machines, huge discrepancy in vote. Door County, Obama '12, Trump '16, but much much closer in vote count; optical scanning of paper ballots and not a touchscreen machine.
This is literally the first 3 counties that voted Obama in '12, Trump in '16 that I selected pretty much at random. It does nothing to dispel the claims of potential fraud, nor do the many demonstrations of e-voting machines being easy to hack. That a bunch of experts have claimed it would be hard to do so because the machines aren't on the internet only shows that the only expertise they have is manipulating things on the internet. There are plenty of actual, physical manipulations of vote counts in US election voting history, New York in the 19th century was rife with it for some time periods. Not everything, surprisingly, has to be done through the internet.
There's nothing wrong with seeking not just a re-count, but in checking the machines used for signs of tampering which is an incredibly necessary idea. Secure elections are a cornerstone of democracy, and double checking one already rife with hacking and blatant media manipulation is an obvious idea.
Nonono, she's from Thuban aka Alpha Draconis. I've explained this multiple times, people! Sheesh!
In PA you need to show proof of it and what they provided was nothing close to be counted as proof.
Just like in PA where the claim of "massive" voter fraud has been tossed about for years despite not a single case being shown as proof. Yet apparently not providing proof was sufficient enough for the legislature to pass a law to prevent this "massive" voter fraud.
If no proof of "massive" voter fraud was sufficient to get the gears rolling then there's no reason not to recount the ballots despite the limited amount of evidence presented. You can't have it both ways.
Also, while Michigan may use paper ballots, it still uses a computer to record the votes. Straight from the Michigan Secretary of State web site:
All voters in Michigan use optical scan ballots. Optical scan voting requires voters to either darken an oval or connect the head and tail of an arrow next to each of their choices on their ballot. Completed ballots are fed into a tabulator, which scans and records the votes. (italics mine)
That right there is the rub. How does one know the electronic machine is correctly recording the votes? Just because a vote is registered does not mean it was registered correctly. Since Michigan has paper ballots, hand count them. It's the easiest way to see if there are any irregularities.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
2) Open source voting machines mean that anyone can inspect the hardware and software to find bugs. That makes it far easier for criminals to discover vulnerabilities and tamper with elections. Having open source voting machines virtually guarantees that criminals will be able to exploit vulnerabilities and have a much easier time rigging elections.
That argument has been debunked over and over. The real argument against open-source in elections is that all it will do is provide a bunch of blueprints and source code for the administration to trot out while the machines will be running... something. Don't think for an instant that you will be allowed to check what the actual machines are running because
that would be a gaping security hole. So open-source is useless as far as electronic voting is concerned.
There's so much hypocrisy in this. On the one hand they don't really give a shit about election integrity and very important things to ensure that our elections really are meaningful and accurate. They don't support biometric voter registration which is standard in many countries now. They don't give a shit about vote weight disparity (in Japan some elections have actually been invalidated in their highest court because of such disparity). They don't really give a shit about meaningful election forensics.
Basically this is just more bullshit from people who engage in nothing but bullshit.
The GOP is a yuuuuge pack of pussies who can't decide whether to be grabbed by Trump now that he's going to be president or be a bunch of whiny little bitches when an orange self-promoting hatemonger with no moral center took over their party.
But it's okay, because he's a star. Here, have some TicTacs
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Of course it is the Democrats (and Soros) behind this, Stein is just a shill because Hillary made such an issue of contesting an election not being "Presidential".
So you're saying Stein cannot possibly consider Hillary to be the lesser evil and couldn't possibly decide to verify that Hillary lost on her own. As for the funding it cannot possibly be the over 50% of Americans who voted for Hillary either. For you it really has to be some conspiracy. Just because... ???
Nope, but she did pick the three sates that caused the Democrat to lose the Electoral college. Why is it that the only states she cares about are the ones that mattered most for Hillary Clinton?
With a voting machine that runs on free software, counties can hire whom they wish to reprogram the machines to conform to new voting laws yet to be passed into law, counties can make changes to their voting paper layouts that the current voting machine software can't parse (perhaps changes needed in order to accommodate more candidates as a result of more people taking an interest in setting policy), counties become less beholden to whatever limitations the proprietors put into current software and more in control of their elections. Those who champion competition and user choice should join the Green Party's push here.
Voter-verified paper ballots are critical to recountable, verifiable elections, but there's nothing wrong with having a machine read or print a voter-verified paper ballot. There's value to the blind and illiterate voter in being able to vote without having to bring a trusted friend into the booth and divulging (what should be) a private matter.
I have no objections to manual vote counts based entirely on voter-verified paper ballots, I think that's an important part of how elections should be run. But I don't see a free software-driven voting machines any voter can optionally use as either pointless or bad. The Green Party is shaming the Democratic Party here both on principle and in practical terms.
Digital Citizen
> You really do just make shit up, don't you?
I just love these post-fact "refutations" where you don't actually bother to cite sources or anything, even though this information is stupidly easy to find online.
Let's look at the important factual claims here, shall we? There are basically two: that she raised more here than in her presidential campaign and that the vote totals were closer in other states that Hillary won and that she's challenging states that would help Hillary win. This leads people to form the opinion that it's Hillary & co. funding this because it benefits Hillary more than Jill Stein. If we just want more confidence in the final results, then all the close states should be recounted, not just those which benefit Hillary.
That said, feel free to suggest improvements to how we vote for the future. We really should prevent vote fraud of every kind. I still remember just a few months back when Tim Kaine was saying stuff like this:
Source: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/20/498676187/vp-candidate-kaine-trump-is-attacking-central-pillar-of-our-democracy
Claim 1 - Jill Stein got more money for a recount than her campaign:
Here's an image for easy comparison, but $5M > $3M. How do we know she got over $5M for this campaign?
"Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Files for Recount in Wisconsin, Raises More Than $5M for Recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania"
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/Green-Party-Candidate-Jill-Stein-to-Seek-Recount-in-Battleground-States-402731286.html
Now, how much did her presidential campaign raise? The FEC has that info here:
http://www.fec.gov/fecviewer/CandidateCommitteeDetail.do?candidateCommitteeId=P20003984&tabIndex=1
This currently gives us about $3 million dollars ('net contributions') as can be seen below:
Claim 2 - The challenges are in favor of Hillary
States where we need recounts: WI, MI, and PA - source was quoted above. States NOT on the recount list NV, CO, MN, or NH - I can find no reports of recount requests here. Feel free to give sources if someone is recounting any of those.
NV is closer than PA & WI. MN is closer than PA. NH was won by just 2,732 votes - far less than any state on this list. CO had a pretty small margin too, but it was slightly larger than the three recount states.
I will also leave this here, because of all the #fakenews about "hacking" the election... never mind that MI (one of the recount states!) uses only paper ballots:
Correct - it's Jill Stein doing the work of the Democrat Party. Her challenge will do zero for her own results. And there are several States that were a LOT closer in terms of results - but happened to break for Hillary. Given her choice of venues for challenge, it's quite obvious that Stein is just carrying the water for the DNC. Probably hoping for her own Bernie-esque $600,000 lake-front cottage courtesy of the Clinton machine...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
MightyMartian rarely posts anything of substance. Here's the last few posts, good luck identifying any kind of a fact-based claim beyond snark:
I guess on Mars you don't need to make actual, verifiable factual claims to rebut things any more. Who knew?
Those are the states most likely to have been rigged, if there was any rigging done. She's not going to pick Kansas or New York, there's no reason for anyone to tamper with the machines there.
Open source voting machines mean that anyone can inspect the hardware and software to find bugs
This is a nonsense argument, because open source does not mean freely available for anyone to download, it means that the customers of the voting machines have full access to the code and can inspect, modify, recompile and (if they wish) redistribute it. That said, this policy from the Greens does show that they completely miss the point. You only have an open and fair election if the overwhelming majority of the electorate are able to audit the elections.
In a UK election, where we use paper ballots, auditors must watch the votes being cast and ensure that they go into the box. They must watch the boxes being carries to the counting stations and ensure that they make it and no votes are added or removed from the box on the way. They must then watch the votes being taken from the boxes and put into piles based on which square contains a cross. Anyone who is not blind can do this. If the sizes of the piles do not roughly correspond to the final tally, then they can request a recount and anyone who is basically numerate can manage this.
Now contrast this with a situation in which you have electronic voting machines. How many people are capable of looking at the entries in the Underhanded C Contest and spotting the malicious behaviour? In that controlled situation, you have small programs and you know that there is something underhanded going on. I'd be willing to bet that under 100 people in the USA are able to audit an electronic voting system and say, with a high level of confidence, that it doesn't contain any malicious code that can affect the results, even if the code is publicly available online. Do you really want to trust your election to the honesty of these people?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I like how once the Republicans win, the possibility of investigating any potential voter/election fraud goes out the window. Whereas before the election they couldn't shut up about it.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Correct - it's Jill Stein doing the work of the Democrat Party.
Or, she's doing the work of a concerned citizen who (a) has the power to do the work and (b) believes Trump will be a disaster.
Probably hoping for her own Bernie-esque $600,000 lake-front cottage courtesy of the Clinton machine...
Oh I see: you don't like what someone's doing so you invent tales of crime and corruption. Well it's obvious that you voted Trump.
SJW n. One who posts facts.