http://www.wildboar.net/politics/voting/articles/scoop/S00065.htm There are so many to chose. from.tohttp://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen Some on this board will not be convinced. There are litterally thousands of sites on this. They are of course to be fitted with tin stovepipe hats. They all hyave it wrong. Note the Bushies are getting snotty again ,predicting some election surprises. They do it with such confidence.
P.S. Some of you may save time saying that I will not be swayed by any sites or information under any circumstances. Then we can address the one with open minds.
Electronic Voting Machines Could Skew Elections - ABC News ABC news mainstream enogh for you.
I’ve said in several threads that a paper trail is ok. Personally, I think it smacks of being a neo-luddite, but I can see that there are a number of folks who are just uncomfortable with the whole concept of electronic voting…so I say put the damn paper trail in already. It will cost more, and really I don’t think that it will do more than calm folks down, but I think at this point, and until people are comfortable with the technology (like they are with, say, paperless financial transactions using their ATM/credit cards) that having a paper trail is a good thing.
-XT
Tangible, yes. Reliable? Maybe.
I doubt it. Unless the Dems win at least one House in Congress, I’m sure you and others will consider that de facto proof that the election was rigged.
Consortiumnews.com Care for precedence.
Speaking for myself, I would only call shenanigans if there was a significant disparity with the exit polls. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. This Diebold thing is the one and only thing which has ever gotten my tinfoil hat out.
I’m also too much of a pessimist to believe that the Dems taking even one house is a foregone conclusion.
I don’t think anyone is saying that these electronic machines are 100% secure. However, the level of your concern is going to be directly related to your expectation that someone will be trying to hack and can successfully change the vote without being found out.
When I lived in NYC, I had a high quality drop-bolt lock and a steel door. Today, I have a latch lock and a door with a humongous pane of glass, any doofus could break in if they had a rock and opposable thumbs. Different security for different levels of concern.
Some people believe we need NYC security on these machines, some think we need Suburb security. My problem with the “NYC” crowd is that they don’t have proof any breakins ever happened, or were even attempted, but keep pointing out the Suburb security as proof that there’s a major problem.
Nopers. The main reason everyone was rushing to replace the old systems with inadequate new electronic systems was because of federal funding. The main problem here is the Help America Vote Act and its ridiculous deadlines to obtain the associated federal funds to upgrade voting machines. Now the debacle in florida is what helped to get this legislation passed, no doubt, but make no mistake - if this legislation would have given states adequate time to research and evaluate these machines and their downfalls and drawbacks, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.
Sheesh. For the purposes of this thread, who cares if Ohio, or Florida, or Bumfuck, Egypt was stolen in a prior election? Who cares which side of that debate any poster happens to be on? That is completely irrelevant, except to those who get a kick out of taking partisan digs at each other.
The point is whether the new electronic voting machines that don’t have a paper trail are reasonably reliable. All the evidence shows that they are potentially unreliable to an astounding degree. Why wait for the hurricane to hit before we fix it? I simply cannot understand why anyone would argue otherwise.
I don’t understand why so many people are focusing on speed. Besides the candidates, whom would it affect if the results weren’t determined for a week or so – long enough to count all the votes? Nobody’s going to be taking office for a few months anyway, so why not do it right?
You might have missed, it, but there was this whole digital revolution thingy that happened a few years ago. 
Seriously, that genie isn’t going back into the bottle. I don’t see the need either to be honest. Why not, instead, have a working and secure digital system? The current machines don’t work right? Fine, fix them. I’m guessing that when the analogue systems first came out (oh, a hundred or so years ago) they weren’t bug free…and that there were folks who distrusted them too (why weren’t scraps of paper put in a big bucket good enough! Was good enough for my pa, and his pa before him!).
-XT
Because of rigged machines or other chicanery; or because the polls somehow overstate the Dems’ chances (in an honest vote count); or for some other reason?
Not because of chicanery, or any rational reason that I can articulate. I think it’s just about me not wanting to get my hopes up. I got them up in 2000 and 2004 and I don’t want to put myself through that again. I don’t want to take anything for granted. I guess I’m so accustomed to losing that winning doesn’t seem like a real possibility even when the signs are as good as they are right now.
If I had to bet money, I would bet that the Dems will get the House fairly handily but come up short in the Senate. I still want to prepare myself emotionally to get nothing, though.
And the reason people haven’t come to the same conclusions you have is that you read a source, find a comma out of place and make the bogus assumption that the whole article is a LIE. In the case of the ChoicePoint settlement, here’s the real point of the settlement:
The point of the lawsuit was to get the voter rolls un-purged. Which would not have been necessary, and which the Jeb Bush administration in Florida would NEVER have agreed to, if the NAACP didn’t have the goods on them.
So, it kinda IS an awful lot like a conviciton, in the sense that restitution of all those voting rights is a condition of the settlement. Wouldn’t need to be restituted if they hadn’t been stolen in the first place, would they?
It’s not COMPLETELY irrelevant. My whole point is very similar to the point of a bank manager saying, “Well of COURSE we need to get a vault to keep our money in … Bonnie and Clyde are in town!”
That said, I can see some Dem pols as being just as prone to steal elections via Diebold hacking as the Pubbies are. Preventing Diebold hacking would rain on their parades, too. I’m completely cool with that. It’s just that right now, with Karl Rove in charge of the Pubbie campaign machinery, the Pubbies are by far the greater threat.
Yes. Why, indeed?
I think that the NYC crowd would be ecstatic if we had a plate-glass windo and a latch lock, because it takes a modicrum of skill to circumvent that security without leaving a huge mess. What we have are people with their doors unlocked (but closed), insisting that since they’ve never seen any sign of burglars in their house, and we have no reason to assume that burglars would go around opening doors.
So, what you’re saying is that it is trivially easy to hack into these systems and change the vote enough to change an election, without it being noticed by anyone.
Neat, can YOU do it? Because I know that I can open a door, but I wouldn’t even know where to start trying to rig an election. Don’t forget the part about making it not noticable. You know, where the polls won’t show glaring changes at each precinct you touch, and you’re hack job is untracable. Really, if you’re going to rig a statewide election, there are a lot of precincts to adjust, that’s a lot of work, a lot of individual hacks, and you have to get them done fast enough that the counts aren’t reported before you hack into it. Don’t make any mistakes either, if XYZ county reports their total, you can’t touch it, that’ll give you away. If any of your hacks are noticed, the whole job is screwed and you go to jail. If you tell anyone about it, chances are you’ll get ratted out, and go to jail.
Maybe I’m just a pessimist, if you say so, I’m sure it’s actually quite an easy project and people will be scrambling to play with the numbers. It’ll be like eBay, it all depends on who can snipe the totals last.
You may not have noticed, but part of the argument for having faith in the machines is that the poll’s glaring changes mean nothing. And that the hack job is untraceable. I’m not arguing either - well, I do agree that the hack jobs are untraceable, but the argument is there.
I couldn’t hack into the voting machines either, but I guarantee you - there are people who can. Those people couldn’t write themselves paychecks from school districts, but I guarantee you - I can. To say that something is impossible or improbable because you can’t do it, is - sorry - nonsense.
As for the undependability of exit polls…hell, if you had voted for Bush, wouldn’t you lie about it?