Please. Dems don’t have nearly as venerable a legacy to live up to in this arena as the Pubbies do, Cheesesteak. Let’s see, what was the name of that hotel that got broken into in '72? Darn, it’s on the tip of my tongue . . .
It’s software. If you have “corporate policy” that disallows employees from looking willy-nilly at the code, then you only need two conspirators – the programmer who put in the vote-stealing instructions, and the boss who ordered him to do so.
First, that happened 32 years ago. Second, I don’t recall the pubbies doing such a bang up job covering up those shenanigans. Third, we’re not talking about a break in, or wiretapping, we’re talking about changing the results of an election via vote fraud.
All I want is proof. Given what I’ve heard, there’s no more grist for this mill than 100 other conspiracy theories. I’m a scientist at heart, and right now, we’re at the hypothesis stage - Bush stole the election. Now is the time to gather facts to support this hypothesis. I’m willing to listen, and so should everyone else, but don’t ask me to get all bent out of shape when you really don’t have anything other than supposition.
rjung, does nobody test these machines? I’d be rather surprised if they don’t go through some sort of testing procedure, either by Diebold, an outside auditor, or the individual governments themselves. Of course that’s pure conjecture on my part, but it seems fairly logical.
It’s had its chance. It failed. The ability to definitively answer accusations of fraud is something a paperless system cannot do, and is a rock-bottom requirement for legitimate elections.
All these PUbbie and “objective” claims that tampering couldn’t POSSIBLY have occurred on touchscreen voting machines are so much empty blather. Just set the Wayback machine to 2002. Imagine that you ask the Pubbies, “What if soldiers commit sexually humiliating forms of tortures on Iraqi prisoners? What if it’s widespread? What if some Iraqi prisoners die from being tortured to death by U.S. soldiers?”
I’m sure you’d get the same sort of general hand-waving blah-blah-blah about how “this could NEVER happen in our modern armed forces which have ALL kinds of safeguards against this sort of thing. Such a conspiracy could NEVER last for more than five minutes because it would require too many people to suppress it.”
Can’t you just hear the same sort of things that are now being said about widespread Pubbie voter fraud, also being said about widespread torture in U.S. prisons in Iraq?
This kind of shit always SEEMS impossible until the perps get nailed for it. The people who are trying to make it seem de facto impossible are blowing smoke. Don’t let them fool you.
Yes, do that – with a paper trail.
With paper, one act of fraud (and its associated one chance to slip up and get caught) produces one fraudulent vote. With paperless electronics, one act of fraud produces as many fraudulent votes as the fraudster likes.
Tell you what…if the perps ever DO get nailed for it (or if I see some of that proof stuff instead of speculation with no substance) then I’ll become a believer that there was wide scale fraud via the electronic voter machines. I will STILL be of the opinion that you don’t toss the baby out with the bathwater…if there WAS wide scale fraud with the electronic machines then fix the machines, create new standards and specifications, etc.
Also, I have to say that if there is smoke being blown about this issue, its coming from the folks making unsubstantiated claims about these machines.
:rolleyes: That was implied Steve. As I said, IF in the future people still feel the need for something as archaic as paper, then by all means put it in. Personally I don’t see whats so magical about paper…after all, if the vote is changed its changed. Having a paper record that Billy Bob voted Democrat when he REALLY wanted to vote Republican doesn’t help the case, unless you go back to Billy Bob and ask him who he (and the other millions of voters) REALLY voted for.
Well, again, I’ve seen no evidence of this…while I HAVE seen real evidence in the past of ballot box stuffing and other fraudulent voting using the older machines or paper ballots. I also don’t think you could get away with producing as many fradulent votes as the ‘fraudster’ wants…not and get away with it. In any case, until I DO see some real evidence I’m going to have to say that whatever fraud took place it was basically in the background noise of fraud thats with us in EVERY election.
Wow…just, wow. It had its chance? Glad you weren’t making the decisions on new technology like the air plane or gun powder for time frames. Its had a whole, what? 2 years? 4? And one presidential election where it wasn’t even that wide spread?? THATS what you call ‘its chance’?
It ‘failed’? And you know this…how exactly? I’ve seen no PROOF that the system failed, or was worse than the older systems already in place.
Certainly for the conspiricy minded not having a paper trail means it can’t ‘definitively answer accusations of fraud’…hell, NOTHING would work to counter the accusations of fraud I’ve heard so far. And perhaps you are right…so many people are paranoid of this new technology that perhaps they SHOULD put in a paper tracking system. Certainly people seem to think that if its on paper it MUST be legitimate.
I notice, though, that neither Kerry’s nor the Democratic parties official stance that fraud took place…nor are they investigating wide scale fraud. That in itself tells me something.
-XT
At this point, I’m skeptical about allegations of fraud. I want to be absolutely certain that there wasn’t widespread fraud.
In six months if no evidence has appeared, I’ll be satisfied. But if fraud had occurred, I’d expect it to be done in a way that couldn’t be uncovered in less than a week.
This is a story to stay tuned on, and hope that it fizzles away.
Daniel
Yes, that would be the logical assumption. But if you go to the black box site, you can read some of the docs they gathered from the FOIA requests (just released this weekend). About this very thing - testing and certification. Get ready to be “rather surprised”…
This isn’t proof of fraud, just a gaping hole in the system (and not the only one). Is that hole acceptable? Not all fires are proven to be arson, but it’s still valid to shout “fire”.
What does it tell you?
Nixon backed down from challenging the dems shenanigans in the 1960 election because of the surfacing of some repub shenanigans. Maybe that eased him into the proper frame of mind to rationalise Watergate?
Unless people realise this isn’t a partisan issue, US democracy could well devolve into a scenario of “dueling hackers”.
It tells me that either its too early to tell, or that there isn’t any story here and that this is an example of people grasping at straws to explain why their golden boy lost…instead of facing the reality that perhaps he lost because the other guy simply got more votes.
Again, I’m not discounting this completely here…there simply is no evidence that wide spread fraud took place with the electronic voting machines at this time. All I’ve seen so far are months and months leading up to this election with dark conspiricy theories (rjung, you there? :)) setting up for a possible defeat, and a lot of rumor and speculation since…but no hard proof. When/if I ever SEE some real solid evidence then I will re-evaluate my position on this. Until then it sounds to me like the average conspiricy theory.
-XT
The proof that it failed is the fact that it is in question and it left NO documentation to answer those questions.
Look at it this way:
[ul][li]If the system is vunerable, fraud will be a possible end result and the system will have failed.[/li][li]Fraud is a possibilty.[/li][li]The occurence of fraud can be tested with documentation (paper trail), thereby removing the possibility that fraud occured.[/li][li]The machines leave no documentation to test for the occurence of fraud. [/li]The end result is that fraud is a possibility. The system failed.[/ul]
Using that logic Cisco every voting system known to man has ‘failed’ then…because all are subject and vulnerable to fraud that can’t be readily documented. There are ways to subvert every known system and to do so in such a way that is pretty much untracable (assuming no one squeels of course).
Again, I fail to see how a ‘paper trail’ is some kind of magic bullet thats going to prove OR disprove fraud. If the code subverts the vote, it will subvert the paper trail as well. In the old analogue machines, if the machine was subverted then the paper trail could potentially be subverted as well. If the ballot box was stuffed, how does having the stuffed ballots on paper help you prove it was fraud?
-XT
Perfection will never be a reality. It’s something we work towards. In a more conventional system, sure, you could add an extra ballot here and there. On an electronic system, though, you could set it to swing, say, 2% of the vote in favor of one candidate or another.
Precisely. One of the basic requirements for an election system is that it provide both the actuality and the appearance of tamper-resistance – and the latter is not possible with an electronic black box even if one stipulates (as I most certainly do not) that the former is.
Well, I agree nothing is ever perfect…and that if people CAN cheat, they probably will.
I however disagree that it would be as easy as you are making it out to be to 2% of the vote (several HUNDRED thousand votes) from one candidate to another without getting caught. After all, supposedly these machines were tested by the agencies that purchased them, no? And from what I remember reading before, BOTH parties got a shot at looking them over.
Again, I’m not saying it couldn’t be done…I’m simply saying I’ve seen no real proof that it has been done, and I’m skeptical that it would be as easy as folks are making it out to be. If more information comes out about this then I will certainly keep an open mind and modify my positions according to new data.
-XT
You can’t subvert a paper trail that is viewed by the voter (unless you somehow brainwash each voter to see something other than what is actually printed on the paper).
Again, ballot-box stuffing creates an amount of evidence that is directly proportional to the amount of fraud (each bogus ballot is potentially detectable). Electronic hacking gives one chance to slip up and get caught, whether you alter one vote or a million.
Well, I probably COULD, using human psychology. Simply modify some random number of voters ballots and print out the wrong candidate and rely on the fact that some percentage of voters aren’t even going to bother to look closely at the printed card…and if they do, call it a ‘glitch’ and allow them to revote. OR, change the vote electronically but print it correct and rely on the fact that unless the race is VERY close on one is going to bother manually recounting the votes…and if they use some kind of bar code scanner or such print the correct name on the ballot but the bar code for the candidate I want to win and if caught call it a ‘glitch’.
However, I haven’t heard that the proposal was to actually print out separate ballots for each voter to be looked over and submitted by the voter (I admit I haven’t really followed this that closely…in New Mexico where I vote we are still using the older machines…which, btw, ALSO don’t have a paper trail or anything else for me, as a voter, to look at to see if my vote was counted correctly…or even at all)…I’d think this would cause major delays. And I can think of ways to subvert such a system the other way, i.e. have the voters convientely ‘lose’ the ballot, damage the ballot, or change or modify the ballot (simply take a ‘lost’ ballot out and photo copy it multiple times and have people vote one way but turn in a different ballot)…then scream about ‘electronic voting machine fraud’.
I don’t see how each ballot is detectable or provides evidence…especially if the polling workers are in on it (which has been the case in the past). I also don’t think it would be as easy to hack an electronic voting machine as you are making it out to be…nor do I think it would be as easy for the original manufacture to insert easter eggs into the code to randomly shift votes to their guy and not have it detected.
-XT
And get caught as soon as it becomes evident that, each time somebody does notice it, it’s always the same “glitch”.
How?
Every system I’ve seen seriously proposed involves having the paper ballot filled out by the voter and dropped into the box, or a paper backup of choices entered via keyboard printed out and viewed behind a window. In neither case is there an opportunity to create bogus copies of the ballot.
The difference is that an electronic voting machine can easily have its code erased without a trace once the final totals are in, and there is then no way to tell whether the reported totals bear any relation to the votes actually cast (unless the fraudsters do something stupid like cast more votes than there are voters – and even then there’s no way to retrieve the real vote totals other than throwing out the election and starting over).
I mentioned the way the Nevada (Washoe County) voting machines were set up to use a paper trail on the first page - it doesn’t allow the kind of fraud you’re talking about here. The machine printed a paper ballot on a roll (like a cash register receipt printer) that the voter could examine behind a sheet of glass. The paper couldn’t be handled by the voter, and couldn’t be removed from the machine without removing every paper ballot from that machine. you couldn’t conveniently “lose” the ballot, damage it, photocopy it multiple times, or switch it out for another one, simply because it’s connected to every other printed ballot. I don’t know how the machine handles ballots that are reviewed and then changed, but I assume there would be some kind of indicator printed on or over the spoiled ballot.
It didn’t cause any significant delays, and I was happy with the system and confident in its security. I don’t see any reason it couldn’t be implemented in more parts of the country.
Let’s see. We have a voting technology that leaves no paper trail. Investigators are not permitted to look at the source code: that’s a proprietary secret, you see.
Meanwhile, Bush wins 10 out of the 11 battleground states by more than the exit polls predict. That, to me, sounds like something systematic.
Now, I’m not alleging fraud, per se. Yet. I’m just saying (echoing, really) that the polling firms should release their raw data, and that the statisticians should give it the once-over.
Here’s an interesting piece by University of Pennsylvania researcher Steven Freenman, (WARNING, Pdf file) “The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy.”