Government officials should have done the best they can; now it is time for the people to do the best they can by taking action, playing detective, finding irregulations, voter intimidation or even fraud as pointed out by BBV: Help America Audit -- 5 Things You Can Do Immediately, among others.
Here's my concern. First, that's posted on a decidedly partisan site. And, most disturbingly, NO WHERE in that list does it say anything about the two bills in the House and Senate that will add permanent, voter-verified paper receipts to every ballot cast, as well as add additional tamper-proofing measures. (Both linked and mentioned in my parent post.)
Instead, it encourages people who have no experience to start scrutinizing voting returns in counties, putting bumper stickers and signs on their cars, showing politically charged films, annoying techniques for "urgently" "blurting out" random, ridiculous comments related to e-voting, already assuming there's fraud (no, seriously, anyone who didn't visit the link, you HAVE to see this), complaining everywhere possible, even apparently advocating vandalizing property that does not belong to you to get out ostensibly divisive, incendiary messages about e-voting fraud, etc.
Almost everything under the sun, in fact, except the one thing that can actually help: passing a blanket federal law to require all jurisdictions to use equipment that provides the ONE thing that solves this problem completely: a voter-verified permanent paper trail for every vote.
But they'd rather fuel the flames who think Bush has now stolen not one, but two elections, and concentrate on conspiracy theories and, best of all, it opens with:
I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2. Even the journalists are pretty horrified. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time, and he was calling from somewhere else. He was trying to figure out how to get the real news out on vote fraud.
Um. Wow.
I don't even know where to go with that.
An appeal to authority from an ANONYMOUS person, who claims that the ENTIRE media has been "locked down tight", implying that there was widespread fraud that already illegitimately handed Bush the election. And, of course, that NO media organization at all will talk about it. How convenient. Wow. No, that's not fucking designed specifically to get democraticunderground's readers pissed off, nope, not at all.
You'd think someone really concerned about this would urge people to contact their representatives and senators to support the legislation that will fix this. Or, maybe that it would even *mention* the proposed legislation, considering that it's over a year old. But nope, instead it's better to keep the hatred, vitriol, and rhetoric flowin'.
You don't need Diebold or any other vendor to rig the election. Just close the Diebold tallying program, edit the database manually, restart the tally program and the results are different.
That's by point: the people who would be doing this would ostensibly be trusted county election or government officials. The same people that the county has always trusted with their elections. Someone would have to do it maliciously, and with small enough numbers to avoid getting caught. And, they could at most only do it in their own county.
This could be done directly at the machine--or even remotely with nobody the wiser.
The tabulator is not supposed to be connected to the internet. There are provisions to handle results via modem, but apparently some e-voting watchdogs have reason to believe this could be insecure as well, and recommend manually carrying the media storing the votes to the central tabulator. Again, even if a machine is somehow connected, it would require someone knowing all of the ins and outs of the voting equipment, modem phone numbers, passwords, etc., and even then only in one jurisdiction (and possibly even limited to certain polling places), since every other county would be different.
But there are some states that have laws with criminal punishment for what are known as "faithless electors", i.e., electoral college members who vote contrary to wishes of their state's population.
It is unlikely that there will be even one faithless elector, much less the 21 that would be required to shift the election to Kerry. It would also fly in the face of the whole system of the electoral college; even in the hotly contested 2000 election, when it still wasn't even sure Bush really got the most votes in Florida, legitimately, and didn't even win the popular vote of the country, Florida's electors all still voted for Bush (since it was believed that Bush won Florida before any recounts, as subsequent official and unofficial recounts proved).
No, people aren't supposed to be "okay" with the errors.
What I'm trying to get across here is:
1. These are parts of the difficulties to transitioning to new systems
2. That errors are being discovered proves audit systems are working - both within and without the voting systems themselves
What would you have us do? We can't federally mandate one paper-only non-electronic mechanical voting system for the entire country; we've already granted the power to hold and manage elections to the states and, more specifically, the counties.
We are trying to address the issue of ALL equipment needing to meet a reasonable, consistent standard to ensure that the votes of all voters count.
There will ALWAYS be errors. I'm more concerned about the ones that aren't being caught, but you can't really prove a negative. I.e., there is no way to prove there are more undetected flaws; unfortunately, with many of these systems, there also isn't any way to prove there aren't.
But the point is that these errors are just that: errors. I'm not about to say there was no wanton fraud of any kind in the thousands of jurisdictions around the United States. But what I AM saying is that there was NO FRAUD in this election that changed the results of the election: thinking that there was represents a fundamental misunderstanding of just how complex the system is. And no, I don't mean how complex the computers are. I mean how complex the whole election process is, and how many people are involved. It is logistically impossible for any one person to alter votes in any more but possibly one county. And even then, it would have to be a rouge person with malicious intent within that jurisdiction, because only election officials have access to the equipment, counts, knowledge of the processes in their particular county, etc.
I'm not defending the flaws. I'm arguing that we should SEE THEM as "flaws" and NOT "fraud", and work toward fixing it, instead of having the attitude that a lot of people do that there was some kind of widespread secret conspiracy to hand Bush the election. Implicit in that belief is also the idea that our democracy has already been hijacked, and that's quite a dangerous charge to be making, especially when there is no proof of it (aside from everything I've already said). The key is to develop systems where it is easy to prove, if necessary, that our democracy HASN'T been hijacked, and I think we can do just that. No less than three times did I say we should support the HAVA amendment adding voter-verified permanent paper receipts for each vote, as well as the additional tamper-proof provisions the bill adds to HAVA. We can and should do this, but harping on errors *that are being discovered by the audit process, as they should be, and which proves the system is working*, is a little counterproductive.
People cry foul because of old, broken, or malfunctioning mechanical/paper voting systems.
Congress passes a law setting uniform, consistent standards for voting systems in all jurisdictions, such that they meet certain requirements, and ensure that ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions have access to very similar equipment and voting methods.
Naturally, it being the 21st century, we decided to go with - *gasp* - electronic systems. Since we use computer and electronic systems to manage our entire society, including its money, this wasn't that far fetched of an idea.
Paper audit trails were never made mandatory. And most municipalities don't even want them, because it adds another layer of complexity to a system that, ironically, was supposed to make things easier.
But no matter what, you can't win. Someone will cry foul on every side of the argument, and even though HAVA was designed to address the EXACT concerns of poor precincts in the 2000 election, now it's getting crucified for other reasons.
The HAVA amendment to add a paper trail is what we need to pass. But even if that happens, people will still complain about voter intimidation, or how it's not fair that someone who's been on God's green earth for over 18 years is disenfranchised because they haven't been able to find out where their polling place is in the four years since the last presidential election.
Apparently you've forgotten that, first, the electoral college determines the president, and second, that even when the big news organizations went back and recounted Florida they way *they* thought it should be done, Bush still won.
Also, the Supreme Court did not appoint anyone to anything. They decided on a SPECIFIC recount issue, raised FIRST by the Gore campaign, and decided. EVEN WHEN THE VOTES WERE RECOUNTED THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS WOULD HAVE DONE IT, GORE STILL LOST FLORIDA BY 500 VOTES.
No, Bush didn't win the popular vote. And there are all sorts of other things you can allege about thousands of Black voters, etc. But Bush still won. Thinking he didn't - even AFTER the following election - really represents the fundamental problems of acceptance some people have with conservative politicians in office.
...and I'm not a closet anything, but thanks for your genuine concern.
It's the responsibility of the government and municipalities to demand hardware that provides what they need (i.e., a paper audit trail). No e-voting vendor is going to refuse to build something that municipalities will buy.
But they haven't gone down that road because the whole purpose of e-voting was to eliminate paper ballots, and all the headaches (spoilage, recounts, disenfranchisement via old/malfunctioning mechanical equipment, etc.) that go along with them.
How is it that we can build reliable, accountable systems to handle power, money, and everything else in our society, but somehow it's fundamentally impossible to expect that it could be done with voting. As I've said, I AGREE that we should have a paper trail: but it was NOT part of the specs for designs presented to e-voting vendors. All three of the e-voting vendors already have the capability to add individual receipt printing capability. The onus is TOTALLY on the municipalities to get it, and there should be blanket federal legislation requiring it.
These requirements have been set by the Federal Election Commission, which has always overseen our elections. The software has been reviewed, including at a source code level, as required by law by independent third parties.[1]
Personally, I'd prefer that the source be open for public inspection and that there be a voter-verified paper trail...
Diebold strongly refutes the existence of any "back doors" or "hidden codes" in its GEMS software. These inaccurate allegations appear to stem from those not familiar with the product, misunderstanding the purpose of legitimate structures in the database. These structures are well documented and have been reviewed (including at a source code level) by independent testing authorities as required by federal election regulations.
In addition to the facts stated above, a paper and an electronic record of all cast ballots are retrieved from each individual voting machine following an election. The results from each individual machine are then tabulated, and thoroughly audited during the standard election canvass process. Once the audit is complete, the official winners are announced. Any alleged changes to a vote count in the election management software would be immediately discovered during this audit process, as this total would not match the true official total tabulated from each machine.
...but the title of the main story in the submission is:
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
It's comments like that that put people on the defensive, when we should be simply working to ensure ways to make the machines, systems, and processes more reliable, and that a voter-verified paper trail exists.
Though, someone raised a valid concern in a previous slashdot story: if we have so little faith in our ability to oversee, manage, and use e-voting systems, what's to stop any number of groups from demanding paper recounts in almost every jurisdiction, every time. Yes, our democracy is *that important*; I'm not saying it isn't. But this is a double-edged sword: many people have alleged that poorer communities have always gotten the shaft from old, poorly working, or broken election equipment; HAVA aims to ensure that consistent voting systems that meet a certain standard are available to ALL voters - and, naturally, we chose to go down the electronic path. We trust computers with just about everything under the sun: our power, our health, our lives, our money - and we've developed reliable systems for many tasks. Why can't the same be accomplished with e-voting? Sure, if Diebold itself was counting the votes on a single central computer under their control with no audit trail, I could understand the concern. But these are literally thousands of independent, non-network-connected systems in thousands of jurisdictions, monitored by people who have been charged with monitoring our elections forever.
So, what's fundamentally different now? And yes, I'm fully aware what not having a permanent audit trail means. We should have that. But that's not what I'm asking.
I said, right at the bottom, that I took much of that from a couple of my previous posts on this topic. And I also am a slashdot subscriber, so I had time to put it together beforehand.
Are you actually alleging that ALL THREE e-voting vendors - ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia - have found some way to add votes only to the Republican candidates, undetected?
Do you think Kerry's $300M campaign, and the hundreds of experts who worked it for the better part of two years, just said "Oh, well! Guess we lost, even though there's proof of widespread fraud! Let's just throw in the towel and not say anything about it!" Wake up.
These are EXACTLY the kinds of problems, i.e., errors and failures in equipment (and setup) that we aim to prevent. But it is not possible for a central entity to control the vote.
We do need verified voting, but I'm sorry to say that there was no widespread fraud in all e-voting states. It's just not possible. There are thousands of people involved, thousands of pieces of equipment, many, many, many election and other government officials at all levels in extremely disparate jurisdictions with different ways of doing things, with no way for any central entity to reach these machines after the fact. (And no, they don't come "preloaded" with votes for Republican candidates; the logistics of the way they're set up and the diversity of the the configurations also makes that impossible.)
Bush won. Again. Get over it.
H.R.2239 and S.1980, discussed further here [verifiedvoting.org], will amend the Help America Vote Act (an act designed to ensure consistent voting systems that meet certain standards be available to ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions), such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter.
Please, simply support this legislation.
Additionally, the electronic voting manufacturers, such as Diebold, already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products.[1] Don't believe people who make it seem like companies like Diebold are resisting. They aren't. They'll build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
The roadblock, as it turns out, is often local election boards. First, the new paper verification systems NEED to go through the government certification process - remember, it's the e-voting watchdogs who are chastising non-certified patches/updates being put into place; the paper audit systems need to go through the same certification process. Further, many municipalities can't understand why they should be forcing paper audit trails; after all, they think, they are just getting away from paper ballots - why should they be arguing for paper ballots (and all the headaches that go along with them, ON TOP of the headaches they already have from learning to deal with e-voting), so why should they go back to them?
Folks, so many people are involved in elections at so many different levels that there is literally no way that any central entity could rig an election across an entire state. Experts dealing with e-voting don't even have this on their radar. Their concern is more errors and failures. E.g., most of Ohio is still punchcard as it is (the majority of the 35 counties moving to e-voting pushed off the transition until AFTER the election because of problems), and someone like Diebold doesn't even have access to this equipment after the fact. Yes, an unscrupulous election official or enterprising hacker might be able to breach individual machines and potentially even a county - it's possible. But the likelihood of something like that happening on any significant scale, ESPECIALLY without being caught (the articles we're talking about here actually prove that the audit processes, be they what they are, do work) is very, very low.
ALL equipment sold before this date in the US that does not respect the Broadcast Flag will be grandfathered in. From http://eff.org/broadcastflag/:
The good news is this mandate doesn't take effect for another year. We have until July 1, 2005, to buy, build, and sell fully-capable, non-flag-compliant HDTV receivers. Any receivers built now will "remain functional under a flag regime, allowing consumers to continue their use without the need for new or additional equipment." [PDF] Any devices made this year can be re-sold in the future.
No attributions, no information about what the data is, or where it came from. The exit poll numbers were all already adjusted, as they always are. So where's their data? Why does no one put their name on it? Face it: Bush won. (I didn't vote for him.)
See here and here for more details, including information on why exit poll numbers are always adjusted.
Also, those charts are even more worthless, since you'd need to see county-by-county and polling place-by-polling place data to have anything meaningful come out of it. Further, those states use e-voting machines by three different manufacturers. Are you actually alleging that ALL THREE e-voting vendors have found some way to add votes only to the Republican candidates, undetected. Yeah, rrrright. Do you think Kerry's $300M campaign, and the hundreds of experts who worked it for the better part of two years, just said "Oh, well! Guess we lost, even though there's proof of widespread fraud! Let's just throw in the towel and not say anything about it!" Wake up.
We do need verified voting, but I'm sorry to say that there was no widespread fraud in all e-voting states. It's just not possible. There are thousands of people involved, thousands of pieces of equipment, many, many, many election and other government officials at all levels in extremely disparate jurisdictions with different ways of doing things, with no way for any central entity to reach these machines after the fact. (And no, they don't come "preloaded" with votes for Republican candidates; the logistics of the way they're set up and the diversity of the the configurations also makes that impossible.)
Here's yet another person who is an expert in political polling and exit polls, talking about why the polls were wrong (hint: it's not because electronic voting machines were rigged):
I think the important thing about exit polls is they show us why people won and the dynamics of the race. The mistake most people make is they see polls as a horse-race, but they are actually the explanation of what happened.
The polls may have been wrong about who won, but they were right about explaining why people voted the way they did. If you don't have polls, you allow the elites and candidates to interpret the elections in their own interest. Polls, in many ways, are crucial to democracy.
If you look at previous elections, you can see that exit polls are always different the day after the election. Exit polls ultimately are always right, though they are never right originally. This is because polls have to be weighted with the actual vote to be completely accurate. The vote, of course, can't be factored in until the election is completed. If the exit polls are not "corrected" in this way, then the analysis of the election will always be flawed. So after the polls have closed, exit polls are always weighted for demographics and for the actual votes.
Don't you think that a person like this, and all the other veteran people who have devoted their lives to politics and elections, even SUSPECTED that there might be fraud on a scale that "handed" someone an election, that they have access to all sorts of connections, resources, and tools far beyond the lame (sometimes fabricated) charts (with no attribution whatsoever) that are being emailed around supposedly "proving" that exit polls only didn't match in states that use e-voting?
The reason why the mainstream press isn't talking about it isn't because they "don't want to touch it", or that they haven't picked up on it. It's just not true.
Stop focusing on really, really stupid comments that Diebold's CEO made in the capacity of a GOP campaigner (as if he can magically have a 13,000 person company rig elections in 88 counties and thousands of polling places around the states, on machines over which they have no control), and instead focus on what's important, which is ensuring that as the Help America Vote Act moves forward, and more and more electronic machines get installed everywhere in an effort to make voting fair and consistent for every American citizen, that we have a permanent voter-verified paper trail associated with every individial vote in every election. The e-voting manufacturers already have this capability. All we have to do is make it an umbrella federal law that ALL municipalities implement such technology, whether they want to or not.
H.R.2239 and S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act (an act designed to ensure consistent voting systems that meet certain standards be available to ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions), such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter.
Please, simply support this legislation.
Additionally, the electronic voting manufacturers, such as Diebold, already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products.[1] Don't believe people who make it seem like companies like Diebold are resisting. They aren't. They'll build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
The roadblock, as it turns out, is often local election boards. First, the new paper verification systems NEED to go through the government certification process - remember, it's the e-voting watchdogs who are chastising non-certified patches/updates being put into place; the paper audit systems need to go through the same certification process. Further, many municipalities can't understand why they should be forcing paper audit trails; after all, they think, they are just getting away from paper ballots - why should they be arguing for paper ballots (and all the headaches that go along with them, ON TOP of the headaches they already have from learning to deal with e-voting), so why should they go back to them?
Folks, so many people are involved in elections at so many different levels that there is literally no way that any central entity could rig an election across an entire state. Experts dealing with e-voting don't even have this on their radar. Their concern is more errors and failures. E.g., most of Ohio is still punchcard as it is (the majority of the 35 counties moving to e-voting pushed off the transition until AFTER the election because of problems), and someone like Diebold doesn't even have access to this equipment after the fact. Yes, an unscrupulous election official or enterprising hacker might be able to breach individual machines and potentially even a county - it's possible. But the likelihood of something like that happening on any significant scale, ESPECIALLY without being caught (the articles we're talking about here actually prove that the audit processes, be they what they are, do work) is very, very low.
That said, we absolutely should be ensuring that there is a permanent, voter-verified, paper record. It is absolutely critical to our voting process, even if the software is still proprietary on these systems (though it, too, should be open for public inspection). But the permanent voter-verified paper record alone eliminates the chances for any widespread fraud with the counting process itself, and at the very least makes any fraud easily reversible and/or detectable.
Contact your representative and senators, and urge them to support the above bills. It will be a lot more productive that imagining fantasies about Diebold "handing" Bush the election. (If ANYTHING remotely like that happened, there are a shitload of professors, campaign staff, scholars, journalists, and researchers who know a LOT more than you do who would be all over this in a heartbeat. Kerry's $300 million, two-year campaign didn't just roll over for no reason. Bush won, whether anyone likes it or not, and it wasn't because electronic voting handed anyone anything. The POINT here, is that instead of inventing wild conspiracy theories, we should be ensuring that there is voter verification and a permanent paper record for all future elections, because HAVA will require a shift to electronic voting for everyone - before that happens, we should make sure that it's veri
The Mozilla Foundation has been really doing a fantastic job with thinks like Mozilla, Firefox (and Camino!), Thunderbird, and the new multiplatform Sunbird calendaring client.
Kudos to the team both at the Foundation and in the open source community for turning out this first rate software!
Yeah. Because the results of the exit polls changed.
I know this might be hard to believe.
The pollsters are embarrassed as all hell about it today, too.
There's no conspiracy here. CNN (or *anyone*) would be the *first* to want to be all over a story about any potential vote tampering.
The exit polling changed. Period. They're polls. Polls have margins of error (in this case, +/-5%). In the end, the complete aggregated data more or less matches the election. A sensible person would understand this.
It just accurately represents the fully aggregated results of ALL exit polling.
No one will answer this question:
What, exactly, are you alleging? People keep saying "revised" or "modified". Please answer this for me, so I understand you clearly:
Are you suggesting that CNN and/or other organizations have falsified exit poll data or otherwise provided incorrect, artificiual, or manufactured exit poll numbers such that it "matches" the election results?
Yes or no.
If yes, what POSSIBLE motivation would CNN have to falsify exit polls, ESPECIALLY in the state on which the entire election hinged? Why would the Kerry campaign, a $300M, two year operation do absolutely nothing about it?
Their database contains two sets of voting books. A secret key combination enables the hidden book and the machine will report on it.
I've highlighted the really important bit. It's the giant pink elephant no media organization wanted to touch, and there's no logical explanation for it except to enable vote tampering.
No, I already knew about this. (Fuck, do I have to write a goddamned novel with each slashdot post to prove I'm aware of the facts so I don't get accosted by people who assume that the only way you can have an opinion in opposition to theirs is if you don't have all the "facts"...and their version of the "facts" at that?)
Why?
Because you say so? Because blackboxvoting.org says so?
And then you use the good ol' "the media won't touch it" excuse? Well then your assertions must be true! Convenient.
Or might it be that you don't have any idea what elements might be used for in proprietary software. Note: I DO NOT think it should be proprietary, and I think that the source code of all operational components of such a system be available for public inspection, including all subsequent patches and updates, and overseen by a government custodian.
Diebold strongly refutes the existence of any "back doors" or "hidden codes" in its GEMS software. These inaccurate allegations appear to stem from those not familiar with the product, misunderstanding the purpose of legitimate structures in the database. These structures are well documented and have been reviewed (including at a source code level) by independent testing authorities as required by federal election regulations.
In addition to the facts stated above, a paper and an electronic record of all cast ballots are retrieved from each individual voting machine following an election. The results from each individual machine are then tabulated, and thoroughly audited during the standard election canvass process. Once the audit is complete, the official winners are announced. Any alleged changes to a vote count in the election management software would be immediately discovered during this audit process, as this total would not match the true official total tabulated from each machine.
So yeah, consider the source and all that. The operative word here being consider.
Additionally, do you think a multi-hundred-million dollar campaign (i.e. Kerry/Edwards) is just ignoring this? That no one on their staff is INTIMATELY aware of these situations and allegations. Quite the contrary. And rest assured that if there was anything substantial to do or prove, they'd be doing or proving it.
So, are you, too, alleging that CNN falsified its exit polling numbers? Because that's what i get from your allegations.
Is it that hard to believe that polling might have indicated one thing in certain areas and another thing in others? The exit polling dipped and rose with the actual election returns, and there was always a ~+/-5% margin of error.
But the final, aggregated numbers more or less match the actual results. Are you saying that CNN has fudged these to match, i.e., lying about the numbers, meaning they are manufacturing artificial exit poll data? And if you are, what possible motivation would they have to do that?
If there was a big discrepancy, they'd (not to mention the $300 million Kerry campaign) want to be all the fuck over it...ESPECIALLY in the state that is deciding the election.
So I hate to break it to you, but Bush won, and there was nothing fishy to speak of going on.
And, uh, the networks didn't "revise" anything. The problem was that pre-election polling in states like Ohio made some people, like Zogby, pretty damned sure Ohio was a gimme for Kerry. But they were wrong. And the exit polling showed that.
Now let me get this straight: you're alleging that the major networks changed their exit polling figures, i.e., purposely falsified results, to make the exit poll numbers match the election outcome?
Wow. Do you use Reynolds or a generic brand for your hat?
I hate to tell you this, but I watched the AP returns on Ohio from the poll close to 100% precincts reporting, and the exit polls more or less mirrored the results the whole time.
"We feel strongly that our pre-election polls were accurate on virtually every state. Our predictions on many of the key battleground states like Ohio and Florida were within the margin of error. I thought we captured a trend, but apparently that result didn't materialize."
You don't think the Kerry campaign, and all the shitloads of people working for it, realizes this?
A $300M operation that's been going on for the better part of two years, for whom 55 million people voted and believe that the future of the country is at stake?
They're just going to roll over and say "Oh well" for no reason?
I have news for you: there is not wholesale or widespread fraud in the election. And what fraud (on BOTH sides), inappropriate behavior, etc., is statistically irrelevant in this election. If Kerry believed there was a way to win, believe me, they'd be doing it.
I hate to break it to you, but the geek community isn't "on to" something big, and everyone else just doesn't realize it. Electronic voting has problems. Big problems. We need transparency. Blackboxvoting is fighting for it.
But no one stole, or was handed, this election. Bush won it, with the largest number of votes in history, with an absolute majority, and with additional seats in the House and Senate to boot.
Face it. Bush won. Keep working on making electronic voting open and transparent.
And you know what? When you do, Republican candidates can and will still win.
Slashdot Mirror
Government officials should have done the best they can; now it is time for the people to do the best they can by taking action, playing detective, finding irregulations, voter intimidation or even fraud as pointed out by BBV: Help America Audit -- 5 Things You Can Do Immediately, among others.
Here's my concern. First, that's posted on a decidedly partisan site. And, most disturbingly, NO WHERE in that list does it say anything about the two bills in the House and Senate that will add permanent, voter-verified paper receipts to every ballot cast, as well as add additional tamper-proofing measures. (Both linked and mentioned in my parent post.)
Instead, it encourages people who have no experience to start scrutinizing voting returns in counties, putting bumper stickers and signs on their cars, showing politically charged films, annoying techniques for "urgently" "blurting out" random, ridiculous comments related to e-voting, already assuming there's fraud (no, seriously, anyone who didn't visit the link, you HAVE to see this), complaining everywhere possible, even apparently advocating vandalizing property that does not belong to you to get out ostensibly divisive, incendiary messages about e-voting fraud, etc.
Almost everything under the sun, in fact, except the one thing that can actually help: passing a blanket federal law to require all jurisdictions to use equipment that provides the ONE thing that solves this problem completely: a voter-verified permanent paper trail for every vote.
But they'd rather fuel the flames who think Bush has now stolen not one, but two elections, and concentrate on conspiracy theories and, best of all, it opens with:
I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2. Even the journalists are pretty horrified. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time, and he was calling from somewhere else. He was trying to figure out how to get the real news out on vote fraud.
Um. Wow.
I don't even know where to go with that.
An appeal to authority from an ANONYMOUS person, who claims that the ENTIRE media has been "locked down tight", implying that there was widespread fraud that already illegitimately handed Bush the election. And, of course, that NO media organization at all will talk about it. How convenient. Wow. No, that's not fucking designed specifically to get democraticunderground's readers pissed off, nope, not at all.
You'd think someone really concerned about this would urge people to contact their representatives and senators to support the legislation that will fix this. Or, maybe that it would even *mention* the proposed legislation, considering that it's over a year old. But nope, instead it's better to keep the hatred, vitriol, and rhetoric flowin'.
You don't need Diebold or any other vendor to rig the election. Just close the Diebold tallying program, edit the database manually, restart the tally program and the results are different.
That's by point: the people who would be doing this would ostensibly be trusted county election or government officials. The same people that the county has always trusted with their elections. Someone would have to do it maliciously, and with small enough numbers to avoid getting caught. And, they could at most only do it in their own county.
This could be done directly at the machine--or even remotely with nobody the wiser.
The tabulator is not supposed to be connected to the internet. There are provisions to handle results via modem, but apparently some e-voting watchdogs have reason to believe this could be insecure as well, and recommend manually carrying the media storing the votes to the central tabulator. Again, even if a machine is somehow connected, it would require someone knowing all of the ins and outs of the voting equipment, modem phone numbers, passwords, etc., and even then only in one jurisdiction (and possibly even limited to certain polling places), since every other county would be different.
But there are some states that have laws with criminal punishment for what are known as "faithless electors", i.e., electoral college members who vote contrary to wishes of their state's population.
It is unlikely that there will be even one faithless elector, much less the 21 that would be required to shift the election to Kerry. It would also fly in the face of the whole system of the electoral college; even in the hotly contested 2000 election, when it still wasn't even sure Bush really got the most votes in Florida, legitimately, and didn't even win the popular vote of the country, Florida's electors all still voted for Bush (since it was believed that Bush won Florida before any recounts, as subsequent official and unofficial recounts proved).
No, people aren't supposed to be "okay" with the errors.
What I'm trying to get across here is:
1. These are parts of the difficulties to transitioning to new systems
2. That errors are being discovered proves audit systems are working - both within and without the voting systems themselves
What would you have us do? We can't federally mandate one paper-only non-electronic mechanical voting system for the entire country; we've already granted the power to hold and manage elections to the states and, more specifically, the counties.
We are trying to address the issue of ALL equipment needing to meet a reasonable, consistent standard to ensure that the votes of all voters count.
There will ALWAYS be errors. I'm more concerned about the ones that aren't being caught, but you can't really prove a negative. I.e., there is no way to prove there are more undetected flaws; unfortunately, with many of these systems, there also isn't any way to prove there aren't.
But the point is that these errors are just that: errors. I'm not about to say there was no wanton fraud of any kind in the thousands of jurisdictions around the United States. But what I AM saying is that there was NO FRAUD in this election that changed the results of the election: thinking that there was represents a fundamental misunderstanding of just how complex the system is. And no, I don't mean how complex the computers are. I mean how complex the whole election process is, and how many people are involved. It is logistically impossible for any one person to alter votes in any more but possibly one county. And even then, it would have to be a rouge person with malicious intent within that jurisdiction, because only election officials have access to the equipment, counts, knowledge of the processes in their particular county, etc.
I'm not defending the flaws. I'm arguing that we should SEE THEM as "flaws" and NOT "fraud", and work toward fixing it, instead of having the attitude that a lot of people do that there was some kind of widespread secret conspiracy to hand Bush the election. Implicit in that belief is also the idea that our democracy has already been hijacked, and that's quite a dangerous charge to be making, especially when there is no proof of it (aside from everything I've already said). The key is to develop systems where it is easy to prove, if necessary, that our democracy HASN'T been hijacked, and I think we can do just that. No less than three times did I say we should support the HAVA amendment adding voter-verified permanent paper receipts for each vote, as well as the additional tamper-proof provisions the bill adds to HAVA. We can and should do this, but harping on errors *that are being discovered by the audit process, as they should be, and which proves the system is working*, is a little counterproductive.
People cry foul because of old, broken, or malfunctioning mechanical/paper voting systems.
Congress passes a law setting uniform, consistent standards for voting systems in all jurisdictions, such that they meet certain requirements, and ensure that ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions have access to very similar equipment and voting methods.
Naturally, it being the 21st century, we decided to go with - *gasp* - electronic systems. Since we use computer and electronic systems to manage our entire society, including its money, this wasn't that far fetched of an idea.
Paper audit trails were never made mandatory. And most municipalities don't even want them, because it adds another layer of complexity to a system that, ironically, was supposed to make things easier.
But no matter what, you can't win. Someone will cry foul on every side of the argument, and even though HAVA was designed to address the EXACT concerns of poor precincts in the 2000 election, now it's getting crucified for other reasons.
The HAVA amendment to add a paper trail is what we need to pass. But even if that happens, people will still complain about voter intimidation, or how it's not fair that someone who's been on God's green earth for over 18 years is disenfranchised because they haven't been able to find out where their polling place is in the four years since the last presidential election.
Apparently you've forgotten that, first, the electoral college determines the president, and second, that even when the big news organizations went back and recounted Florida they way *they* thought it should be done, Bush still won.
Also, the Supreme Court did not appoint anyone to anything. They decided on a SPECIFIC recount issue, raised FIRST by the Gore campaign, and decided. EVEN WHEN THE VOTES WERE RECOUNTED THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS WOULD HAVE DONE IT, GORE STILL LOST FLORIDA BY 500 VOTES.
No, Bush didn't win the popular vote. And there are all sorts of other things you can allege about thousands of Black voters, etc. But Bush still won. Thinking he didn't - even AFTER the following election - really represents the fundamental problems of acceptance some people have with conservative politicians in office.
...and I'm not a closet anything, but thanks for your genuine concern.
It's the responsibility of the government and municipalities to demand hardware that provides what they need (i.e., a paper audit trail). No e-voting vendor is going to refuse to build something that municipalities will buy.
But they haven't gone down that road because the whole purpose of e-voting was to eliminate paper ballots, and all the headaches (spoilage, recounts, disenfranchisement via old/malfunctioning mechanical equipment, etc.) that go along with them.
How is it that we can build reliable, accountable systems to handle power, money, and everything else in our society, but somehow it's fundamentally impossible to expect that it could be done with voting. As I've said, I AGREE that we should have a paper trail: but it was NOT part of the specs for designs presented to e-voting vendors. All three of the e-voting vendors already have the capability to add individual receipt printing capability. The onus is TOTALLY on the municipalities to get it, and there should be blanket federal legislation requiring it.
These requirements have been set by the Federal Election Commission, which has always overseen our elections. The software has been reviewed, including at a source code level, as required by law by independent third parties.[1]
Personally, I'd prefer that the source be open for public inspection and that there be a voter-verified paper trail...
[1] http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/375954
Diebold strongly refutes the existence of any "back doors" or "hidden codes" in its GEMS software. These inaccurate allegations appear to stem from those not familiar with the product, misunderstanding the purpose of legitimate structures in the database. These structures are well documented and have been reviewed (including at a source code level) by independent testing authorities as required by federal election regulations.
In addition to the facts stated above, a paper and an electronic record of all cast ballots are retrieved from each individual voting machine following an election. The results from each individual machine are then tabulated, and thoroughly audited during the standard election canvass process. Once the audit is complete, the official winners are announced. Any alleged changes to a vote count in the election management software would be immediately discovered during this audit process, as this total would not match the true official total tabulated from each machine.
...but the title of the main story in the submission is:
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
It's comments like that that put people on the defensive, when we should be simply working to ensure ways to make the machines, systems, and processes more reliable, and that a voter-verified paper trail exists.
Though, someone raised a valid concern in a previous slashdot story: if we have so little faith in our ability to oversee, manage, and use e-voting systems, what's to stop any number of groups from demanding paper recounts in almost every jurisdiction, every time. Yes, our democracy is *that important*; I'm not saying it isn't. But this is a double-edged sword: many people have alleged that poorer communities have always gotten the shaft from old, poorly working, or broken election equipment; HAVA aims to ensure that consistent voting systems that meet a certain standard are available to ALL voters - and, naturally, we chose to go down the electronic path. We trust computers with just about everything under the sun: our power, our health, our lives, our money - and we've developed reliable systems for many tasks. Why can't the same be accomplished with e-voting? Sure, if Diebold itself was counting the votes on a single central computer under their control with no audit trail, I could understand the concern. But these are literally thousands of independent, non-network-connected systems in thousands of jurisdictions, monitored by people who have been charged with monitoring our elections forever.
So, what's fundamentally different now? And yes, I'm fully aware what not having a permanent audit trail means. We should have that. But that's not what I'm asking.
I said, right at the bottom, that I took much of that from a couple of my previous posts on this topic. And I also am a slashdot subscriber, so I had time to put it together beforehand.
Are you actually alleging that ALL THREE e-voting vendors - ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia - have found some way to add votes only to the Republican candidates, undetected?
.[1] Don't believe people who make it seem like companies like Diebold are resisting. They aren't. They'll build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
Do you think Kerry's $300M campaign, and the hundreds of experts who worked it for the better part of two years, just said "Oh, well! Guess we lost, even though there's proof of widespread fraud! Let's just throw in the towel and not say anything about it!" Wake up.
These are EXACTLY the kinds of problems, i.e., errors and failures in equipment (and setup) that we aim to prevent. But it is not possible for a central entity to control the vote.
We do need verified voting, but I'm sorry to say that there was no widespread fraud in all e-voting states. It's just not possible. There are thousands of people involved, thousands of pieces of equipment, many, many, many election and other government officials at all levels in extremely disparate jurisdictions with different ways of doing things, with no way for any central entity to reach these machines after the fact. (And no, they don't come "preloaded" with votes for Republican candidates; the logistics of the way they're set up and the diversity of the the configurations also makes that impossible.)
Bush won. Again. Get over it.
H.R.2239 and S.1980, discussed further here [verifiedvoting.org], will amend the Help America Vote Act (an act designed to ensure consistent voting systems that meet certain standards be available to ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions), such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter.
Please, simply support this legislation.
Additionally, the electronic voting manufacturers, such as Diebold, already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products
The roadblock, as it turns out, is often local election boards. First, the new paper verification systems NEED to go through the government certification process - remember, it's the e-voting watchdogs who are chastising non-certified patches/updates being put into place; the paper audit systems need to go through the same certification process. Further, many municipalities can't understand why they should be forcing paper audit trails; after all, they think, they are just getting away from paper ballots - why should they be arguing for paper ballots (and all the headaches that go along with them, ON TOP of the headaches they already have from learning to deal with e-voting), so why should they go back to them?
Folks, so many people are involved in elections at so many different levels that there is literally no way that any central entity could rig an election across an entire state. Experts dealing with e-voting don't even have this on their radar. Their concern is more errors and failures. E.g., most of Ohio is still punchcard as it is (the majority of the 35 counties moving to e-voting pushed off the transition until AFTER the election because of problems), and someone like Diebold doesn't even have access to this equipment after the fact. Yes, an unscrupulous election official or enterprising hacker might be able to breach individual machines and potentially even a county - it's possible. But the likelihood of something like that happening on any significant scale, ESPECIALLY without being caught (the articles we're talking about here actually prove that the audit processes, be they what they are, do work) is very, very low.
That said, we absolutely sho
ALL equipment sold before this date in the US that does not respect the Broadcast Flag will be grandfathered in. From http://eff.org/broadcastflag/:
The good news is this mandate doesn't take effect for another year. We have until July 1, 2005, to buy, build, and sell fully-capable, non-flag-compliant HDTV receivers. Any receivers built now will "remain functional under a flag regime, allowing consumers to continue their use without the need for new or additional equipment." [PDF] Any devices made this year can be re-sold in the future.
No attributions, no information about what the data is, or where it came from. The exit poll numbers were all already adjusted, as they always are. So where's their data? Why does no one put their name on it? Face it: Bush won. (I didn't vote for him.)
See here and here for more details, including information on why exit poll numbers are always adjusted.
Also, those charts are even more worthless, since you'd need to see county-by-county and polling place-by-polling place data to have anything meaningful come out of it. Further, those states use e-voting machines by three different manufacturers. Are you actually alleging that ALL THREE e-voting vendors have found some way to add votes only to the Republican candidates, undetected. Yeah, rrrright. Do you think Kerry's $300M campaign, and the hundreds of experts who worked it for the better part of two years, just said "Oh, well! Guess we lost, even though there's proof of widespread fraud! Let's just throw in the towel and not say anything about it!" Wake up.
We do need verified voting, but I'm sorry to say that there was no widespread fraud in all e-voting states. It's just not possible. There are thousands of people involved, thousands of pieces of equipment, many, many, many election and other government officials at all levels in extremely disparate jurisdictions with different ways of doing things, with no way for any central entity to reach these machines after the fact. (And no, they don't come "preloaded" with votes for Republican candidates; the logistics of the way they're set up and the diversity of the the configurations also makes that impossible.)
Bush won. Again. Get over it.
Here's yet another person who is an expert in political polling and exit polls, talking about why the polls were wrong (hint: it's not because electronic voting machines were rigged):
http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=4027
Notable quote:
I think the important thing about exit polls is they show us why people won and the dynamics of the race. The mistake most people make is they see polls as a horse-race, but they are actually the explanation of what happened.
The polls may have been wrong about who won, but they were right about explaining why people voted the way they did. If you don't have polls, you allow the elites and candidates to interpret the elections in their own interest. Polls, in many ways, are crucial to democracy.
If you look at previous elections, you can see that exit polls are always different the day after the election. Exit polls ultimately are always right, though they are never right originally. This is because polls have to be weighted with the actual vote to be completely accurate. The vote, of course, can't be factored in until the election is completed. If the exit polls are not "corrected" in this way, then the analysis of the election will always be flawed. So after the polls have closed, exit polls are always weighted for demographics and for the actual votes.
Don't you think that a person like this, and all the other veteran people who have devoted their lives to politics and elections, even SUSPECTED that there might be fraud on a scale that "handed" someone an election, that they have access to all sorts of connections, resources, and tools far beyond the lame (sometimes fabricated) charts (with no attribution whatsoever) that are being emailed around supposedly "proving" that exit polls only didn't match in states that use e-voting?
The reason why the mainstream press isn't talking about it isn't because they "don't want to touch it", or that they haven't picked up on it. It's just not true.
Stop focusing on really, really stupid comments that Diebold's CEO made in the capacity of a GOP campaigner (as if he can magically have a 13,000 person company rig elections in 88 counties and thousands of polling places around the states, on machines over which they have no control), and instead focus on what's important, which is ensuring that as the Help America Vote Act moves forward, and more and more electronic machines get installed everywhere in an effort to make voting fair and consistent for every American citizen, that we have a permanent voter-verified paper trail associated with every individial vote in every election. The e-voting manufacturers already have this capability. All we have to do is make it an umbrella federal law that ALL municipalities implement such technology, whether they want to or not.
H.R.2239 and S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act (an act designed to ensure consistent voting systems that meet certain standards be available to ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions), such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter.
.[1] Don't believe people who make it seem like companies like Diebold are resisting. They aren't. They'll build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
Please, simply support this legislation.
Additionally, the electronic voting manufacturers, such as Diebold, already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products
The roadblock, as it turns out, is often local election boards. First, the new paper verification systems NEED to go through the government certification process - remember, it's the e-voting watchdogs who are chastising non-certified patches/updates being put into place; the paper audit systems need to go through the same certification process. Further, many municipalities can't understand why they should be forcing paper audit trails; after all, they think, they are just getting away from paper ballots - why should they be arguing for paper ballots (and all the headaches that go along with them, ON TOP of the headaches they already have from learning to deal with e-voting), so why should they go back to them?
Folks, so many people are involved in elections at so many different levels that there is literally no way that any central entity could rig an election across an entire state. Experts dealing with e-voting don't even have this on their radar. Their concern is more errors and failures. E.g., most of Ohio is still punchcard as it is (the majority of the 35 counties moving to e-voting pushed off the transition until AFTER the election because of problems), and someone like Diebold doesn't even have access to this equipment after the fact. Yes, an unscrupulous election official or enterprising hacker might be able to breach individual machines and potentially even a county - it's possible. But the likelihood of something like that happening on any significant scale, ESPECIALLY without being caught (the articles we're talking about here actually prove that the audit processes, be they what they are, do work) is very, very low.
That said, we absolutely should be ensuring that there is a permanent, voter-verified, paper record. It is absolutely critical to our voting process, even if the software is still proprietary on these systems (though it, too, should be open for public inspection). But the permanent voter-verified paper record alone eliminates the chances for any widespread fraud with the counting process itself, and at the very least makes any fraud easily reversible and/or detectable.
Contact your representative and senators, and urge them to support the above bills. It will be a lot more productive that imagining fantasies about Diebold "handing" Bush the election. (If ANYTHING remotely like that happened, there are a shitload of professors, campaign staff, scholars, journalists, and researchers who know a LOT more than you do who would be all over this in a heartbeat. Kerry's $300 million, two-year campaign didn't just roll over for no reason. Bush won, whether anyone likes it or not, and it wasn't because electronic voting handed anyone anything. The POINT here, is that instead of inventing wild conspiracy theories, we should be ensuring that there is voter verification and a permanent paper record for all future elections, because HAVA will require a shift to electronic voting for everyone - before that happens, we should make sure that it's veri
I think Mozilla's servers can handle it just fine (they always have).
The Mozilla Foundation has been really doing a fantastic job with thinks like Mozilla, Firefox (and Camino!), Thunderbird, and the new multiplatform Sunbird calendaring client.
Kudos to the team both at the Foundation and in the open source community for turning out this first rate software!
Yeah. Because the results of the exit polls changed.
I know this might be hard to believe.
The pollsters are embarrassed as all hell about it today, too.
There's no conspiracy here. CNN (or *anyone*) would be the *first* to want to be all over a story about any potential vote tampering.
The exit polling changed. Period. They're polls. Polls have margins of error (in this case, +/-5%). In the end, the complete aggregated data more or less matches the election. A sensible person would understand this.
It just accurately represents the fully aggregated results of ALL exit polling. No one will answer this question: What, exactly, are you alleging? People keep saying "revised" or "modified". Please answer this for me, so I understand you clearly: Are you suggesting that CNN and/or other organizations have falsified exit poll data or otherwise provided incorrect, artificiual, or manufactured exit poll numbers such that it "matches" the election results? Yes or no. If yes, what POSSIBLE motivation would CNN have to falsify exit polls, ESPECIALLY in the state on which the entire election hinged? Why would the Kerry campaign, a $300M, two year operation do absolutely nothing about it?
Their database contains two sets of voting books. A secret key combination enables the hidden book and the machine will report on it.
I've highlighted the really important bit. It's the giant pink elephant no media organization wanted to touch, and there's no logical explanation for it except to enable vote tampering.
No, I already knew about this. (Fuck, do I have to write a goddamned novel with each slashdot post to prove I'm aware of the facts so I don't get accosted by people who assume that the only way you can have an opinion in opposition to theirs is if you don't have all the "facts"...and their version of the "facts" at that?)
Why?
Because you say so? Because blackboxvoting.org says so?
And then you use the good ol' "the media won't touch it" excuse? Well then your assertions must be true! Convenient.
Or might it be that you don't have any idea what elements might be used for in proprietary software. Note: I DO NOT think it should be proprietary, and I think that the source code of all operational components of such a system be available for public inspection, including all subsequent patches and updates, and overseen by a government custodian.
I know this will mean nothing to you, but:
Diebold strongly refutes the existence of any "back doors" or "hidden codes" in its GEMS software. These inaccurate allegations appear to stem from those not familiar with the product, misunderstanding the purpose of legitimate structures in the database. These structures are well documented and have been reviewed (including at a source code level) by independent testing authorities as required by federal election regulations.
In addition to the facts stated above, a paper and an electronic record of all cast ballots are retrieved from each individual voting machine following an election. The results from each individual machine are then tabulated, and thoroughly audited during the standard election canvass process. Once the audit is complete, the official winners are announced. Any alleged changes to a vote count in the election management software would be immediately discovered during this audit process, as this total would not match the true official total tabulated from each machine.
So yeah, consider the source and all that. The operative word here being consider.
Additionally, do you think a multi-hundred-million dollar campaign (i.e. Kerry/Edwards) is just ignoring this? That no one on their staff is INTIMATELY aware of these situations and allegations. Quite the contrary. And rest assured that if there was anything substantial to do or prove, they'd be doing or proving it.
Subject of parent should read "The discrepancy was slight".
(See my other post here)
So, are you, too, alleging that CNN falsified its exit polling numbers? Because that's what i get from your allegations.
Is it that hard to believe that polling might have indicated one thing in certain areas and another thing in others? The exit polling dipped and rose with the actual election returns, and there was always a ~+/-5% margin of error.
But the final, aggregated numbers more or less match the actual results. Are you saying that CNN has fudged these to match, i.e., lying about the numbers, meaning they are manufacturing artificial exit poll data? And if you are, what possible motivation would they have to do that?
If there was a big discrepancy, they'd (not to mention the $300 million Kerry campaign) want to be all the fuck over it...ESPECIALLY in the state that is deciding the election.
So I hate to break it to you, but Bush won, and there was nothing fishy to speak of going on.
(Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Bush.)
By lying?
No, actually, I was up until 5AM ET.
And, uh, the networks didn't "revise" anything. The problem was that pre-election polling in states like Ohio made some people, like Zogby, pretty damned sure Ohio was a gimme for Kerry. But they were wrong. And the exit polling showed that.
Now let me get this straight: you're alleging that the major networks changed their exit polling figures, i.e., purposely falsified results, to make the exit poll numbers match the election outcome?
Wow. Do you use Reynolds or a generic brand for your hat?
I hate to tell you this, but I watched the AP returns on Ohio from the poll close to 100% precincts reporting, and the exit polls more or less mirrored the results the whole time.
But now people like Zogby are having to are having to eat their hats:
"We feel strongly that our pre-election polls were accurate on virtually every state. Our predictions on many of the key battleground states like Ohio and Florida were within the margin of error. I thought we captured a trend, but apparently that result didn't materialize."
Sorry to disappoint you.
You don't think the Kerry campaign, and all the shitloads of people working for it, realizes this?
A $300M operation that's been going on for the better part of two years, for whom 55 million people voted and believe that the future of the country is at stake?
They're just going to roll over and say "Oh well" for no reason?
I have news for you: there is not wholesale or widespread fraud in the election. And what fraud (on BOTH sides), inappropriate behavior, etc., is statistically irrelevant in this election. If Kerry believed there was a way to win, believe me, they'd be doing it.
I hate to break it to you, but the geek community isn't "on to" something big, and everyone else just doesn't realize it. Electronic voting has problems. Big problems. We need transparency. Blackboxvoting is fighting for it.
But no one stole, or was handed, this election. Bush won it, with the largest number of votes in history, with an absolute majority, and with additional seats in the House and Senate to boot.
Face it. Bush won. Keep working on making electronic voting open and transparent.
And you know what? When you do, Republican candidates can and will still win.