# Corporations counting our votes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 30, 2003, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corporations-counting-our-votes/185309 "2003-06-30T06:04:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sterra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8c91f0/32.png) [@Sterra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterra)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corporations-counting-our-votes/185309/1 "2003-06-30T06:04:50Z")
[http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm](http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm) Basically this article accuses Chuck Hagel and others of massive voter fraud through the use of the new vote counting machines. It looks pretty solid. > [@](#): > > Maybe Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel honestly won two US Senate elections. Maybe it’s true that the citizens of Georgia simply decided that incumbent Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a wildly popular war veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was, as his successful Republican challenger suggested in his campaign ads, too unpatriotic to remain in the Senate. Maybe George W. Bush, Alabama’s new Republican governor Bob Riley, and a small but congressionally decisive handful of other long-shot Republican candidates really did win those states where conventional wisdom and straw polls showed them losing in the last few election cycles. > > Perhaps, after a half-century of fine-tuning exit polling to such a science that it’s now sometimes used to verify how clean elections are in Third World countries, it really did suddenly become inaccurate in the United States in the past six years and just won’t work here anymore. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots. > > But if any of this is true, there’s not much of a paper trail from the voters’ hand to prove it. I think that if anything this shows why corporations should never have a hand in stuff like this. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Weak\_Force](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9dc877/32.png) [@The\_Weak\_Force](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Weak_Force)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corporations-counting-our-votes/185309/2 "2003-06-30T08:18:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Basically this article accuses Chuck Hagel and others of massive voter fraud through the use of the new vote counting machines. Actually, the article makes no such accusation. In fact, the author seemed pretty careful not to make any direct accusation. > [@](#): > > It looks pretty solid. I’m not seeing it. For the record, I agree with some of the opinions expressed in the article. > [@](#): > > You’d think the computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software and programming available for public scrutiny. You’d think there would be a paper trail of the vote, which could be followed and audited if a there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote counts. A good point. There isn’t a very strong case for fraud, though, as you say. I’ll admit, it seems suspicious that Hagel was formerly an officer of the corporation that ran the voting machines. The case against all the others is weak. But I do think checking of ballots should be facilitated, not hindered. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corporations-counting-our-votes/185309/3 "2003-06-30T08:22:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sterra \* > \*\*[http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm](http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm) > > Basically this article accuses Chuck Hagel and others of massive voter fraud through the use of the new vote counting machines. It looks pretty solid. > > I think that if anything this shows why corporations should never have a hand in stuff like this. \*\* The cited article doesn’t show that Hegel’s partial ownership of the firm gives him the ability to falsify its results. It sure doesn’t show that fraud was committed. It seems unlikely, because it would require a pretty big conspiracy, involving computer programmers, state officials, etc. Note that corporate ownership is separate from the risk of fraud. If the government owned the voting machines, they could commit fraud the same way as a private company could. However, I do agree that voting machines are not the best way to count votes. IMHO a better way is paper ballots, with machine counting. That way, there’s always a physical backup to check the vote if necessary. There are systems available that allow the paper ballot to be tested before submission to be certain that the voter hasn’t accidentally voided any of his/her votes. That could help prevent the butterfly ballot problem in Florida, where voters may have accidentally voted for more than one Presidential candidate. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2003, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corporations-counting-our-votes/185309/4 "2003-06-30T16:21:35Z")
It is a very interesting article it just lacks something, evidence. The only person it quotes is Hagel’s opponent, who has no evidence just accusations. Nebraska is a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 12% and yet Hagel has to resort to voter fraud to get elected? As for the absence of exit polling remember how bad they networks looked in 2000 after relying on exit polls to call Florida for Gore before polls in the most Republican part of the state had closed, then calling the state for Bush and then saying they did not know? The networks were understandably ashamed of their reliance on what turned out to be shaky numbers and decided to only report actual results.