# Does blackboxvoting.org have hard evidence fraud took place in Tuesday's election? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 5, 2004, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-blackboxvoting-org-have-hard-evidence-fraud-took-place-in-tuesdays-election/273182 "2004-11-05T14:29:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2004, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-blackboxvoting-org-have-hard-evidence-fraud-took-place-in-tuesdays-election/273182/161 "2004-11-21T17:45:45Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > When you get some evidence, be sure to let me know. The fact that the tally didn’t match the exit poll is something anybody could see, WHY is the part of this that needs evidence. You just keep saying that the numbers don’t match, and expect that to suffice. Who’s the “you” there? **Annaplurabelle**? I don’t think she’s ready to convict yet. To my mind, the numbers don’t match, and that’s sufficient to want to figure out why. Not to start claiming fraud, but to figure out why. Analogous to saying there’s sufficient evidence to get a warrant, but not enough to indict. ---
**Author:** ![Avenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@Avenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avenger)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2004, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-blackboxvoting-org-have-hard-evidence-fraud-took-place-in-tuesdays-election/273182/162 "2004-11-21T18:03:45Z")
> [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > Ditto. Shoot me a PM Is this guy encouraging me to shoot Tony Blair? ---
**Author:** ![Hazel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Hazel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazel)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2004, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-blackboxvoting-org-have-hard-evidence-fraud-took-place-in-tuesdays-election/273182/163 "2004-11-21T18:57:29Z")
> [@annaplurabelle](#): > > (small snip) …Is this really a partisan issue? Really? > > So what happens when “your guy” loses? Or you change your mind about “your guy” and then you can’t get rid of him? > > Try taking the longer view: As long as electronic voting schemes don’t have 100 percent voter verifiable paper trails, the losing side is going to be able to claim fraud. And they _might_ be right. We’ll never be able to know for sure. > > Barring the discovery of “extraordinary” evidence, we’ll never know for sure if there was fraud or not. _We won’t know_. > > Why would you accept that level of uncertainty when it’s avoidable? This is a very good question. I don’t think there is any good / respectable / aboveboard reason for any state to have switched from whatever they had before to these unverifiable black box voting machines. If you choose an unreliable method, there should be a suspicion that your motive is a desire to make election fraud possible. So that you can endulge in it, if in your opinion, the need arises. If you really purchased black box voting out of ignorance, you still need to justify the failure to either scrap the machines or install a paper trail capacity. As others have said, if we use electionic voting, we need to be sure it is as reliable as ATMs. Also, if state officials do not realize until just before an election that they have allowed themselves to be stuck with unreliable voting methods, they always have the option to just use old-fashioned paper ballots. And hand count them, if optical scanners can’t be trusted. Nevermind if this is slow. What’s the rush? What matters is holding an honest, glitch-free election. The Floridia fiasco of 2000 made it plain that punch card voting and butterfly ballots should not be used. So what did we do? In many districts, we moved to something even worse: black box voting. When are we going to enact real election reform? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-blackboxvoting-org-have-hard-evidence-fraud-took-place-in-tuesdays-election/273182.md?page=8)