If someone does not have a photo-ID, there should be secondary options at a minimum, i.e.: in Minneosta they allow a phone bill addressed to your current address. Provisional ballots are often issued in these cases as well. Requiring a photo-ID has been suggested to disenfranchise a voter and seems like a serious enough risk to avoid the requirement. A study by the U.S. Department of Justice indicated that a study showed, "African-Americans in Louisiana were 4 to 5 times less likely to have government-sanctioned photo ID than white residents."
While I appreciate the impact of the study, by allowing a non-photo-ID method of identification you defeat the purpose of requiring a photo ID. The way you ensure that the voter registration card has a photo attached is that when you register to vote, which you can do when you apply for a driver's license or other state-issued non-driver ID, you use the same picture. With technology the way it is and digital cameras being so prevalent, it's very easy to use that same photo, or have some kind of computer terminal at the polling place so that when you present your registration, they can call it up and see your picture on the screen.
This idea seems like a dangerous step, it could easily lead to tracking of what should be an anonymous vote. Having more than one way of "officially" counting a state vote seems like a better step to me. So that you can have more than one official count and be able to see if they match up.
Like they couldn't do it already if they wanted to with your credit cards or debit cards? You may be able to start with restricting it to any polling place within your home state. The problem is, you can register to vote, legally, in multiple jurisdictions. However, for federal offices, you can only vote in one. For example, if you own a home in upstate New York and a winter home in Florida, you can legally register to vote in both places for town, county, and state level elections. You can only claim one of the two, however, for your US House of Representatives and US Senate and President. Why is this allowed? Well, the state and local taxes affect your secondary home. You have to be able to vote in the elections that can affect those.
And the news agencies calling Florida before the polls closed in the Pensacola (Central Time Zone) area wasn't a problem? How many people turned around when they heard, "We're calling Florida for Al Gore," while they still had an hour to go and vote? It doesn't matter what candidate they would've voted for... they were hurt by Dan Rather, et al, having to call things way too soon.
Sorry, but in our thirst for immediate results, we have completely hurt the process. Nobody should be allowed to announce election results for national elections until the last poll has closed in Hawaii.
It's your license to bitch, and a way I like to shut people up who complain about the current situation. It's real simple:
"Did you vote in the last non-primary election?"
"No."
"Then you're part of the problem."
or
"Yes."
"OK, so did you consider every position your candidate stood for or did you vote for him or her because of party affiliation, or because he or she wasn't the 'other' guy?"
Well, up to a point it will. Anyone and everyone should be able to receive, from these electronic voting machines, a paper copy/receipt showing for whom they voted. In my district, we use the Scantron type of sheets, so our ballots are always "on paper."
Overall, though, what difference is all this going to make if they do not require some kind of voter ID card that has a photo attached to it? Sure, everyone calls up the scenario of the Chicago Mayoral Elections and Mayor Daly (father of the current mayor)... but that was just a blatant one where you had registered voters casting their votes from six feet under. How many other ballots get stuffed by people who are very much alive but not registered voters for whatever reason (e.g., they're not US citizens or they let their registration elapse)? These auditing changes will only do a small fraction of the job. If you do not require voters to produce a photo ID showing that they are legally registered to vote in that district, it doesn't matter what else you do.
With all the new technology, however, one would think that with a valid photo ID with a magnetic stripe, a registered voter could go to any polling place in the nation, swipe his or her card, and see the ballot on the machine in front of them that would be presented to him as if he had gone to his primary polling place. The vote would be registered and counted. No need for absentee ballots, unless you travel outside of the country.
the Democrats simply did not win enough seats back in either the House or the Senate to impeach him
Actually, they do have enough votes to impeach him. Impeachment is done by the House of Representatives, and only requires a simple majority. Think of it like a Grand Jury trial. They only decide if there's enough evidence to send you to a trial.
It's the conviction that requires the Senate and a 2/3 majority vote where there are not enough votes.
As for the real reason, it has a lot more to do with avoiding the shotgun approach like the Republicans did with Bill Clinton and ensuring that the evidence they would use is clear.
The Republicans threw up several different charges instead of being far more pointed and direct with the perjury issue. If the Democrats do something similar, they would be laughed at as well, unless they had some kind of real earth-shattering, indefensible evidence. Otherwise, it looks more like a, "You did it to our guy, so we're doing it to you. Nyaaaah!"
BTW, I thought Clinton's impeachment was bullshit and I'll think the same for Bush's.
Actually, if they would've stuck to the issue... Perjuring oneself to a grand jury... it should have been a no-brainer conviction. If you or I would've done exactly the same thing, we would be sitting in jail, have paid some hefty fines, and have a perjury conviction on our criminal records... one of two convictions that stay with you for the rest of your life.
And if you attempt to impeach President Bush for Fourth Amendment violations with the wiretapping, I would actually agree with that one as well... which, if the evidence is as clear-cut as a lot of people would have you believe (a trial would verify this), the conviction should also be a no-brainer.
Keep in mind, the impeachment itself is akin to a grand jury trial... i.e., it's only an indictment. It's the trial in the Senate presided over by the Chief Justice that is akin to the petit jury trial.
This is nothing but typical political pandering to a "constituent group"... sometimes known as "lip service"... because all they want to do is make sure they get reelected. As bad as it was at the time, Surgeon General Elders was at least trying to provide an alternative that had some foundations in the medical and scientific fields. When her suggestions were bashed, Clinton had to hang her out to dry instead of defending her.
Overall, I'm not surprised by this in the least. In theory, your staff should be supporting your decisions, positions, etc. When they can't, they tend to get squashed like this. The Surgeon General should be a position that is independent of political pressures. Unfortunately, there are times that whatever the Surgeon General says is going to go against some kind of position held by the President. Oh well. Too bad. Maybe then the President (current and future) will make decisions rooted in fact instead of fantasy.
The Surgeon General should, however, be limited to dealing with strictly medical things. Global warming, violent crimes (except for the medical care of the victims), war itself (not the medical care of servicemembers), and the like do not fall under that umbrella.
We're 5 posts in because I saw these subtle connections and others didn't.
I'm not the one here stamping my feet, yelling obscenities trying to get someone else to admit something. You challenged me to show the connection and I did.
NIST establishes the standards... they provide, as far as other agencies and anyone else who depends on things being set to something specific, the standards by which things are defined (e.g., how long a second is based on the vibrations of certain molecules). You would think that an agency that has provided some kind of standards basis... whether you accept these or not... would be able to define something that's usable, etc.
The doublespeak has far more to do with the agencies failing to cooperate... failing to do their work/utilize the work of the other.
Oh, and I assume you mean "shame on everyone who voted differently than me".
No, I mean shame on everyone for continually letting the media and special interests drive the elections and only selecting from the "ruling class" that has so conveniently been created from the continuous selection of only a Democrat or a Republican and the two parties banding together to secure their positions.
Many years ago (around 10-20), I remember a poll/survey stating that something like 75% of the people of the US blamed Congress for the conditions of the economy and other troubles we had at that time... yet 85% of them liked their Congressman. "Everyone else's Congressmen are the problem," is what that poll is stating. Nobody wanted to realize that their Congressman might be a part of the problem too.
NIST is a government agency. And it wouldn't surprise me if the FCC uses SSL on some of their web servers, internally or externally. And how many government agencies use Kerberos?
The SDR Forum has cited the Secure Socket Layer (SSL), a widely used technique for securing e-commerce transactions, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)'s public hash algorithms as evidence that open processes often yield the most highly successful security techniques.
Very typical. First, they say that the stuff is not as secure as the "security by obscurity" method, then they go and say the most widely accepted and used method for secure web transactions is evidence that open source software yields the most highly successful security technique.
And we keep voting the same crew into office who keep appointing the same bozos to the FCC... shame on us.
Oh yeah, and we could use some actual candidates to vote for.
Not that I'm complaining about the bill, but the idea that my vote for either Corporate Tool A or Corporate Tool B will now be recorded accurately isn't quite enough to make me celebrate the return of American democracy:)
That's a rather tall order... that would be like asking for a politician to do the right thing instead of constantly campaigning to get reelected, vote the party line, and, well, actually care about the people he or she is representing and do the job of representing them instead of their political parties.
"A government that takes from Peter to give to Paul can always count on the support of Paul."
That said, a previous poster already showed how with the income tax existing and owning land not being the only way they collect taxes from you pretty much obsoletes the requirement in most cases. However, in many municipalities and/or counties, the only form of tax is the property tax.
I would guess the opposite. Microsoft probably just went and used it regardless. That's exactly what they did with the trademark for "Internet Explorer"... which was owned by a small company in the midwest.
Microsoft will use the same tactic... keep the case tied up in the courts until the small company runs out of money and goes bankrupt... after which they'll "buy" the trademark from them by handing them a settlement check that will leave the company out of business, but not in any kind of debt.
When compared to these smaller companies, Microsoft has infinite resources... so they just take and use what they want when they want to... but (whatever Deity) help you if you try to just out-and-out use one of their trademarks or something extremely close to one of their trademarks for something.
But President Theodore Roosevelt was one of those whose administrations saw one of the largest expansions of the federal government's power.
Abraham Lincoln
Theodore Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
John F. Kennedy/Lyndon B. Johnson
Those four are the earlier culprits. Of course, we can now add George W. Bush to that list. But it seems to be running reasonably close with regards to Republican vs Democrat.
There is something else about OS/2. Its days were numbered not because Microsoft jumped ship to produce Windows. IBM actually had OS/2 Warp 3.0 ready and on the market BEFORE Windows 95 was ready for release. There were two major flaws.
The first is IBM's marketing tactics. They had Microsoft beat, time-wise. The mistake they made was a poor marketing campaign. They should've been out there, touting the whole thing, trumpeting its arrival, etc. Instead, they seemed to come out with the general attitude of, "We're IBM. People will flock to us anyway."
The other mistake is software availability. IBM never went out and got various third party companies to make readily available software for Warp 3.0. So you could go out and get this new operating system... but couldn't run anything on it except the expensive IBM software.
Change those two things, and Windows might not be as dominant as it is now.
We need to teach that other groups are more important than one's party. We need to make these other groups carry more weight and wean people off the idea that a politician *IS* a D or and R. They are not.
The big problem is the oversimplification that someone is either "left," "center," or "right." This doesn't take into account what types of issues someone falls into when classified with one of those three categories. Unfortunately, the D's and R's would have you believe that they are the only choices. Their parties are "opposites" on whatever the issue is, yet most everyone I know is part D and part R, depending on the issue in question. The current political parties are trying to pigeon-hole everyone and say that if you are "pro-choice," you must also be "pro gay," "favor higher taxes, especially on the wealthy," and "favor gun control." They don't allow for the fact that you might have a "pro-choice, keep-what-you-earn, gun-toting homosexual" or something like that.
The current political parties are ancient relics that need to get revised and realigned. As the "party faithful" go out and pick the candidates for the rest of the country, the less-than-enthusiastic "middle" will eventually come out and say, "Screw you all! I want someone who isn't as extreme as you clowns running and ruining this country any more."
Even George Washington warned against the formation of political parties.
I can tell you what a friend of mine ended up doing... he spent the 60's, 70's, and at least part of the 80's working in IT either at IBM or as a consultant to IBM. After that, he ended up going into business for himself making wood furniture. His primary niche was to make Medieval and Renaissance period replica furniture. He did, the last couple of years, do some French First Empire stuff as well, because that's what one of his customers wanted.
Sadly, my friend passed away from a heart attack late in October, 2006, of a heart attack, having spent the last 15+ years of his life better known to the Renaissance Festival world as Dan the Master Joyner.
The only thing keeping these jokers from breaking rocks is the fact the republicans are in power.... or were in power... ohh this is going to be interesting.
While I agree that it will get interesting, if the Democrats knew about this problem and then used it, doesn't that make them just as criminally liable for misuse and voter fraud as the people who caused the problem in the first place?
I can see it now... Democrats are going to lambaste me, Republicans are going to deny there's a problem, and anyone with the capability of logical thought will agree, or at least present a good argument as to how there are differences.
I do not, for a moment, believe that anyone who knew about this "irregularity" in the system and failed to raise issues before the election is innocent. While the candidates themselves may not have known, party leaders and/or loyalists are the more likely candidates for who knew and abused the system. I also blame the designers for poor design and implementation work.
You're comparing that to altering vote totals on election night in the Republican owned voting machines? You need to get some perspective.
Does the name Richard Daly mean anything to you? You know... Chicago Mayoral election... people voting from the grave...
You really need to stop viewing things through partisan glasses and get away from politics. It's people like you who are helping to continue the problems we currently have. The problems are caused by career politicians. It doesn't matter whether they are Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, or some other faction. Once they're too ensconced in their positions, they lose touch with the world around them. I frequently describe the Circular Parking Lot, er, Capital Beltway as an anti-logic wall... logical reasoning is unable to penetrate it, and those who spend too much time inside it lose their ability to reason logically.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but in our thirst for immediate results, we have completely hurt the process. Nobody should be allowed to announce election results for national elections until the last poll has closed in Hawaii.
"Did you vote in the last non-primary election?"
"No."
"Then you're part of the problem."
or
"Yes."
"OK, so did you consider every position your candidate stood for or did you vote for him or her because of party affiliation, or because he or she wasn't the 'other' guy?"
Overall, though, what difference is all this going to make if they do not require some kind of voter ID card that has a photo attached to it? Sure, everyone calls up the scenario of the Chicago Mayoral Elections and Mayor Daly (father of the current mayor)... but that was just a blatant one where you had registered voters casting their votes from six feet under. How many other ballots get stuffed by people who are very much alive but not registered voters for whatever reason (e.g., they're not US citizens or they let their registration elapse)? These auditing changes will only do a small fraction of the job. If you do not require voters to produce a photo ID showing that they are legally registered to vote in that district, it doesn't matter what else you do.
With all the new technology, however, one would think that with a valid photo ID with a magnetic stripe, a registered voter could go to any polling place in the nation, swipe his or her card, and see the ballot on the machine in front of them that would be presented to him as if he had gone to his primary polling place. The vote would be registered and counted. No need for absentee ballots, unless you travel outside of the country.
It's the conviction that requires the Senate and a 2/3 majority vote where there are not enough votes.
As for the real reason, it has a lot more to do with avoiding the shotgun approach like the Republicans did with Bill Clinton and ensuring that the evidence they would use is clear.
The Republicans threw up several different charges instead of being far more pointed and direct with the perjury issue. If the Democrats do something similar, they would be laughed at as well, unless they had some kind of real earth-shattering, indefensible evidence. Otherwise, it looks more like a, "You did it to our guy, so we're doing it to you. Nyaaaah!"
And if you attempt to impeach President Bush for Fourth Amendment violations with the wiretapping, I would actually agree with that one as well... which, if the evidence is as clear-cut as a lot of people would have you believe (a trial would verify this), the conviction should also be a no-brainer.
Keep in mind, the impeachment itself is akin to a grand jury trial... i.e., it's only an indictment. It's the trial in the Senate presided over by the Chief Justice that is akin to the petit jury trial.
This is nothing but typical political pandering to a "constituent group"... sometimes known as "lip service"... because all they want to do is make sure they get reelected. As bad as it was at the time, Surgeon General Elders was at least trying to provide an alternative that had some foundations in the medical and scientific fields. When her suggestions were bashed, Clinton had to hang her out to dry instead of defending her.
Overall, I'm not surprised by this in the least. In theory, your staff should be supporting your decisions, positions, etc. When they can't, they tend to get squashed like this. The Surgeon General should be a position that is independent of political pressures. Unfortunately, there are times that whatever the Surgeon General says is going to go against some kind of position held by the President. Oh well. Too bad. Maybe then the President (current and future) will make decisions rooted in fact instead of fantasy.
The Surgeon General should, however, be limited to dealing with strictly medical things. Global warming, violent crimes (except for the medical care of the victims), war itself (not the medical care of servicemembers), and the like do not fall under that umbrella.
I'm not the one here stamping my feet, yelling obscenities trying to get someone else to admit something. You challenged me to show the connection and I did.
Guess what... secure sockets (https). So they DO use it.
Yet the FCC will use the technologies they're declaring insecure.
The doublespeak has far more to do with the agencies failing to cooperate... failing to do their work/utilize the work of the other.
Many years ago (around 10-20), I remember a poll/survey stating that something like 75% of the people of the US blamed Congress for the conditions of the economy and other troubles we had at that time... yet 85% of them liked their Congressman. "Everyone else's Congressmen are the problem," is what that poll is stating. Nobody wanted to realize that their Congressman might be a part of the problem too.
And we keep voting the same crew into office who keep appointing the same bozos to the FCC... shame on us.
XTS-400 (Wikipedia entry)
XTS-400
That particular system is rated at EAL 5. IBM's only achieved EAL 4.
That said, a previous poster already showed how with the income tax existing and owning land not being the only way they collect taxes from you pretty much obsoletes the requirement in most cases. However, in many municipalities and/or counties, the only form of tax is the property tax.
501st Legion of Stormtroopers
Microsoft will use the same tactic... keep the case tied up in the courts until the small company runs out of money and goes bankrupt... after which they'll "buy" the trademark from them by handing them a settlement check that will leave the company out of business, but not in any kind of debt.
When compared to these smaller companies, Microsoft has infinite resources... so they just take and use what they want when they want to... but (whatever Deity) help you if you try to just out-and-out use one of their trademarks or something extremely close to one of their trademarks for something.
Those four are the earlier culprits. Of course, we can now add George W. Bush to that list. But it seems to be running reasonably close with regards to Republican vs Democrat.
The first is IBM's marketing tactics. They had Microsoft beat, time-wise. The mistake they made was a poor marketing campaign. They should've been out there, touting the whole thing, trumpeting its arrival, etc. Instead, they seemed to come out with the general attitude of, "We're IBM. People will flock to us anyway."
The other mistake is software availability. IBM never went out and got various third party companies to make readily available software for Warp 3.0. So you could go out and get this new operating system... but couldn't run anything on it except the expensive IBM software.
Change those two things, and Windows might not be as dominant as it is now.
The current political parties are ancient relics that need to get revised and realigned. As the "party faithful" go out and pick the candidates for the rest of the country, the less-than-enthusiastic "middle" will eventually come out and say, "Screw you all! I want someone who isn't as extreme as you clowns running and ruining this country any more."
Even George Washington warned against the formation of political parties.
Sadly, my friend passed away from a heart attack late in October, 2006, of a heart attack, having spent the last 15+ years of his life better known to the Renaissance Festival world as Dan the Master Joyner.
I can see it now... Democrats are going to lambaste me, Republicans are going to deny there's a problem, and anyone with the capability of logical thought will agree, or at least present a good argument as to how there are differences.
I do not, for a moment, believe that anyone who knew about this "irregularity" in the system and failed to raise issues before the election is innocent. While the candidates themselves may not have known, party leaders and/or loyalists are the more likely candidates for who knew and abused the system. I also blame the designers for poor design and implementation work.
You really need to stop viewing things through partisan glasses and get away from politics. It's people like you who are helping to continue the problems we currently have. The problems are caused by career politicians. It doesn't matter whether they are Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, or some other faction. Once they're too ensconced in their positions, they lose touch with the world around them. I frequently describe the Circular Parking Lot, er, Capital Beltway as an anti-logic wall... logical reasoning is unable to penetrate it, and those who spend too much time inside it lose their ability to reason logically.