"Most large corporations are public, which means management reports to a board of directors, which reports to the shareholders.
Who are the shareholders? Look around you... it's all of us."
Now THERE'S a joke! Forst, the idea that Boards answer to shareholders -- you don't know much about these issues, do you? Do you know about the recent replacement of the SEC head BECAUSE they want less accountability to shareholders?
Do you know that something like 95% of the SHARES of public corporations are owned by about 2% of the public. The rest of the shares are divided up among the next 30% or so, and then a very, very small percentage of ownership spreads past that.
I was at a company that went public around the same time. We received all kinds of warnings about making statements and hyping the company, and then watched as Red Hat DID all the things we were warned against doing.
So good for the lawyers! A lot of people lost a lot of money because Red Hat was hyping its stock.
So why does Diebold resist selling ballot printers to go along with the machines? This is what I don't get -- all the problems are solved by printing a ballot that the voter looks at and then puts into a ballot box. These ballots can be counted, just as ballots are counted now (except they would be uch easier to count because they would be uniform and machine-generated...)
AND, Diebold would MAKE MORE MONEY! But they are resisting this to the death.
Because it helps Americans AND it helps the workers overseas. AND it enables them to start buying products WE make. What we're doing now is a race to the bottom.
Off the top of my head I can think of a lot of ways to prevent this. But the point is, they can control this the way they already control paper ballots.
For example, have the machine print on special paper, like money is. And like ballots are now.
Making public who voted for who is a terrible idea. It opens up vote-buying. It opens up intimidation.
"The notion that you would be pressured by an employer is equally ludicrous. There are already laws on the books that make it a crime to do this."
They are not enforced. Many companies currently pressure employees to make campaign contributions. Seimans is one example - with several members of the RNC on the Board, they have a PAC that gives money to Republicans in exchange for government contracts. EMployees are pressured to contribute.
If you look at the contribution records of amny companies you'll see that ALL of their executives give the max to Republican candidates and to The Party. You think this is entirely a matter of preference?
Question - how did Democrats vs Republicans get into this? Are electronic voting machines that don't allow the voter to verify that their vote is correctly recorded somehow a Democrat/Republican issue? How did that come into this?
"So under this scenario, what would prevent ballot stuffing?"
The same things that prevent it now. I work as an eletion official. Before the voting we check the ballot boxes - with witnesses. After the voting we empty the boxes - with witnesses - and count the number of ballots to be sure it matches the number of recorded voters. We also count the number of ballots we started with and make sure the tally matches the number of ballots case and the number of unvoted ballots remaining.
We even require a separate car to follow the car taking the ballots to election headquarters to ensure they aren't tampered with on the way.
There are LOTS of procedures in place to ensure ballot integrity.
One problem with the new voting machines is they throw LL those procedures away!
We NEED voter-verified paper ballots printed from these machines.
Oh pleaase. The Palm Beach "butterfly" ballots were very confusing. It just was not clear what you were supposed to do. Many people intending to vote for Gore voted for Buchanan.
I work as an election official and I see what people do. They take their voting responsibility very seriously! This "Democratic voters are too stupid" smear just doesn't wash. You should give people more credit.
I don't CARE if the code is open source. That's just asking the voter to trust different people. AND there is no easy way to guarantee that this is the code in the machine. Also, it doesn't protect against breakdowns of equipment.
What is needed is a voter-verified paper ballot printout that goes into a separate locked ballot box. This way, after voting on the machine the voter can check the ballot to be sure that the voter's choice is correctly recorded.
Using the electronic voting machine reduces the error rate to near-zero. Printing the ballot reduces the counting problems (hanging chads...) because they are standardized, uniform and can be run through counting machines quickly.
With a system like this in place the security of the electronic machines doesn't MATTER.
Re:And what exactly is the official, from Diebold
on
CNN Reports on Diebold
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· Score: 1
But the voting machine companies would MAKE MORE MONEY selling the printers. Marginal revenue from add-on sales like this are much sought-after sales by hardware companies.
But it IS the companies that are resisting selling these add-ons. This immediately makes me suspicious! WTF?!
Have you EVFER heard of a company that doesn't want to sell you an add-on printer, with a maintenance contract? What is going on here?
It was the BUSH campaign that sued - to STOP the vote counting that the local election boards had started.
Almost a full month and dozens of updated recount statistics later
Whoa! That's tricky! It SOUNDS LIKE you are claiming there were dozens of recounts. But there weren't ANY recounts!
the Supreme Court had to step in to stop the unequal treatment that voters in different counties were recieving.
The only "unequal" treatment was the counties that were heavily republican were counting illegal absentee ballots! These were supposedly "military" so they were counted even when it was clear they were filled out after the election!
In fact, in all of the unofficial media recounts that followed the election, Gore only had a slim lead in the most extreme and unlikely of the scenarios (that ALL "undervotes" and ALL "overvotes" would be counted as Gore votes).
This is just factually false! Gore won any recount with all counties. And he, of course, won massively if the 20,000 ballots that were thrown out were counted.
Her point was that the machine isn't supposed to be sending data at 3PM, but it did. That means that the company programmed it to do that - in violation of the law.
And if they're in the habit of going around the law, they could also be downloading things INTO the voting mcahines.
You think you're being funny - but the point here is that without some kind of paper trail that the voter sees, there is NO WAY TO KNOW if the machines were recording the votes correctly or not. There is no reason to trust election results from these machines.
And when Dean wins the next election the Republicans will be the ones saying the vote was rigged. And there will be no way to provie whether they were or not.
Now let's see... what about having run a company for 15 years, and thereby learning that companies LIKE to make add-on sales, makes me "a whiny progressive?"
And what about knowing enough about computers to want a back-up system in place makes me "a whiny progressive?"
And, finally, what kind of debate points do you think you made with that stupid-assed comment?
OK, so it's a "conspiracy theory" to notice that companies usually like to have add-on sales, but this one doesn't.
Can you name one (other) company that doesn't want to make a big, fat, lucrative add-on sale, and because "they don't like the implication that their machine might be flawed?"
If the guy ran a voting machine company, and the voting machine company made machines that can't be audited, and then we found on that company's website that they were illegally obtaining data DURING an election...
And if the company - even though it would MAKE MORE MONEY - refused to make an add-on printer so a ballot could be printed, examined by the voter, and put in a separate ballot box for counting to verify that the machine correctly reported the totals...
Well, I might not be convinced he was going to cheat, but I sure wouldn't want to trust an election to his machines.
Remember, with these machines there is NO WAY to know if the machine correctly reported the vote.
SOME of us here work with computers, so we know that sometimes the computers make mistakes. So wouldn't it be a good thing if we had a way to verify what a machine reported?
What if a machine just broke down? Do we hold the election over again, or do we throw out all the votes from that precinct?
Youir post is so full of right-wing talk-show myths that it's hard to know where to begin.
The woman who sued over spilled coffee was severely burned and required skin grafts - and the McDonald's had been warned several times of this problem.
Anyone can FILE a lawsuit. When people file frivolous suits they cases are thrown out of court and their lawyers are finded.
I also have to point out that if this electronic voting were being taken care of by a private company, these kinds of problems would have a more direct target for blame.
It IS private companies that we are talking about! That's the PROBLEM here.
"If you cannot figure out how to punch the chad out, then your vote should not count."
In the Florida election there were so many people voting (for Gore) that the spaces under the ballot - where the punched-out chads go - filled up. So it was NOT POSSIBLE to completely punch out the chads. This is why there were so many ballots (approx 20,000, all with indents for Gore) that were invalidated.
Your post is meant to be funny, but it illustrates the problem.
If this happened there would be NO WAY TO KNOW if the machines had been screwed with. These machines necessarily undermine the public's faith in the results of elections.
And it would be so simple to fix this problem - and the voting machines companies would MAKE MORE MONEY! Just add a printer, print out the voter's choices, let the voter look them over, and then put that printout into a separate ballot box for counting later, if needed.
Slashdot Mirror
"Most large corporations are public, which means management reports to a board of directors, which reports to the shareholders.
Who are the shareholders? Look around you... it's all of us."
Now THERE'S a joke! Forst, the idea that Boards answer to shareholders -- you don't know much about these issues, do you? Do you know about the recent replacement of the SEC head BECAUSE they want less accountability to shareholders?
Do you know that something like 95% of the SHARES of public corporations are owned by about 2% of the public. The rest of the shares are divided up among the next 30% or so, and then a very, very small percentage of ownership spreads past that.
Informed Comment is Juan Cole's weblog.
I like Seeing the Forest.
I was at a company that went public around the same time. We received all kinds of warnings about making statements and hyping the company, and then watched as Red Hat DID all the things we were warned against doing.
So good for the lawyers! A lot of people lost a lot of money because Red Hat was hyping its stock.
"they are more concerned with making money"
So why does Diebold resist selling ballot printers to go along with the machines? This is what I don't get -- all the problems are solved by printing a ballot that the voter looks at and then puts into a ballot box. These ballots can be counted, just as ballots are counted now (except they would be uch easier to count because they would be uniform and machine-generated...)
AND, Diebold would MAKE MORE MONEY! But they are resisting this to the death.
Because it helps Americans AND it helps the workers overseas. AND it enables them to start buying products WE make. What we're doing now is a race to the bottom.
Off the top of my head I can think of a lot of ways to prevent this. But the point is, they can control this the way they already control paper ballots.
For example, have the machine print on special paper, like money is. And like ballots are now.
Making public who voted for who is a terrible idea. It opens up vote-buying. It opens up intimidation.
"The notion that you would be pressured by an employer is equally ludicrous. There are already laws on the books that make it a crime to do this."
They are not enforced. Many companies currently pressure employees to make campaign contributions. Seimans is one example - with several members of the RNC on the Board, they have a PAC that gives money to Republicans in exchange for government contracts. EMployees are pressured to contribute.
If you look at the contribution records of amny companies you'll see that ALL of their executives give the max to Republican candidates and to The Party. You think this is entirely a matter of preference?
Care to provide any sources for your story?
Question - how did Democrats vs Republicans get into this? Are electronic voting machines that don't allow the voter to verify that their vote is correctly recorded somehow a Democrat/Republican issue? How did that come into this?
"So under this scenario, what would prevent ballot stuffing?"
The same things that prevent it now. I work as an eletion official. Before the voting we check the ballot boxes - with witnesses. After the voting we empty the boxes - with witnesses - and count the number of ballots to be sure it matches the number of recorded voters. We also count the number of ballots we started with and make sure the tally matches the number of ballots case and the number of unvoted ballots remaining.
We even require a separate car to follow the car taking the ballots to election headquarters to ensure they aren't tampered with on the way.
There are LOTS of procedures in place to ensure ballot integrity.
One problem with the new voting machines is they throw LL those procedures away!
We NEED voter-verified paper ballots printed from these machines.
"The ballots in Florida were NOT confusing"
Oh pleaase. The Palm Beach "butterfly" ballots were very confusing. It just was not clear what you were supposed to do. Many people intending to vote for Gore voted for Buchanan.
I work as an election official and I see what people do. They take their voting responsibility very seriously! This "Democratic voters are too stupid" smear just doesn't wash. You should give people more credit.
I don't CARE if the code is open source. That's just asking the voter to trust different people. AND there is no easy way to guarantee that this is the code in the machine. Also, it doesn't protect against breakdowns of equipment.
What is needed is a voter-verified paper ballot printout that goes into a separate locked ballot box. This way, after voting on the machine the voter can check the ballot to be sure that the voter's choice is correctly recorded.
Using the electronic voting machine reduces the error rate to near-zero. Printing the ballot reduces the counting problems (hanging chads...) because they are standardized, uniform and can be run through counting machines quickly.
With a system like this in place the security of the electronic machines doesn't MATTER.
But the voting machine companies would MAKE MORE MONEY selling the printers. Marginal revenue from add-on sales like this are much sought-after sales by hardware companies.
But it IS the companies that are resisting selling these add-ons. This immediately makes me suspicious! WTF?!
Have you EVFER heard of a company that doesn't want to sell you an add-on printer, with a maintenance contract? What is going on here?
Do they have an Interact computer?
Oh yeah, and the story about what happened when Apple was trying to get OEMs interested in an Intel version of MacOS...
You left out how Microsoft killed off OS/2.
It was the BUSH campaign that sued - to STOP the vote counting that the local election boards had started.
Almost a full month and dozens of updated recount statistics later
Whoa! That's tricky! It SOUNDS LIKE you are claiming there were dozens of recounts. But there weren't ANY recounts!
the Supreme Court had to step in to stop the unequal treatment that voters in different counties were recieving.
The only "unequal" treatment was the counties that were heavily republican were counting illegal absentee ballots! These were supposedly "military" so they were counted even when it was clear they were filled out after the election!
In fact, in all of the unofficial media recounts that followed the election, Gore only had a slim lead in the most extreme and unlikely of the scenarios (that ALL "undervotes" and ALL "overvotes" would be counted as Gore votes).
This is just factually false! Gore won any recount with all counties. And he, of course, won massively if the 20,000 ballots that were thrown out were counted.
Her point was that the machine isn't supposed to be sending data at 3PM, but it did. That means that the company programmed it to do that - in violation of the law.
And if they're in the habit of going around the law, they could also be downloading things INTO the voting mcahines.
The ATMs give you a paper trail. The voting machines don't.
You think you're being funny - but the point here is that without some kind of paper trail that the voter sees, there is NO WAY TO KNOW if the machines were recording the votes correctly or not. There is no reason to trust election results from these machines.
And when Dean wins the next election the Republicans will be the ones saying the vote was rigged. And there will be no way to provie whether they were or not.
Now let's see... what about having run a company for 15 years, and thereby learning that companies LIKE to make add-on sales, makes me "a whiny progressive?"
And what about knowing enough about computers to want a back-up system in place makes me "a whiny progressive?"
And, finally, what kind of debate points do you think you made with that stupid-assed comment?
OK, so it's a "conspiracy theory" to notice that companies usually like to have add-on sales, but this one doesn't.
Can you name one (other) company that doesn't want to make a big, fat, lucrative add-on sale, and because "they don't like the implication that their machine might be flawed?"
If the guy ran a voting machine company, and the voting machine company made machines that can't be audited, and then we found on that company's website that they were illegally obtaining data DURING an election...
And if the company - even though it would MAKE MORE MONEY - refused to make an add-on printer so a ballot could be printed, examined by the voter, and put in a separate ballot box for counting to verify that the machine correctly reported the totals...
Well, I might not be convinced he was going to cheat, but I sure wouldn't want to trust an election to his machines.
Remember, with these machines there is NO WAY to know if the machine correctly reported the vote.
SOME of us here work with computers, so we know that sometimes the computers make mistakes. So wouldn't it be a good thing if we had a way to verify what a machine reported?
What if a machine just broke down? Do we hold the election over again, or do we throw out all the votes from that precinct?
Youir post is so full of right-wing talk-show myths that it's hard to know where to begin.
The woman who sued over spilled coffee was severely burned and required skin grafts - and the McDonald's had been warned several times of this problem.
Anyone can FILE a lawsuit. When people file frivolous suits they cases are thrown out of court and their lawyers are finded.
I also have to point out that if this electronic voting were being taken care of by a private company, these kinds of problems would have a more direct target for blame.
It IS private companies that we are talking about! That's the PROBLEM here.
"If you cannot figure out how to punch the chad out, then your vote should not count."
In the Florida election there were so many people voting (for Gore) that the spaces under the ballot - where the punched-out chads go - filled up. So it was NOT POSSIBLE to completely punch out the chads. This is why there were so many ballots (approx 20,000, all with indents for Gore) that were invalidated.
Your post is meant to be funny, but it illustrates the problem.
If this happened there would be NO WAY TO KNOW if the machines had been screwed with. These machines necessarily undermine the public's faith in the results of elections.
And it would be so simple to fix this problem - and the voting machines companies would MAKE MORE MONEY! Just add a printer, print out the voter's choices, let the voter look them over, and then put that printout into a separate ballot box for counting later, if needed.