OK, how about this – the replacement of votes on an electronic voting machine can be done with little more than a Philips-head screwdriver and a USB flash drive, as shown here. With the right data on the drive, a person could turn an entire precinct over to a candidate while she was in the booth to vote.
With the paper ballot box, there’s a possibility to keep people from being alone with the mechanism that counts the votes. The box is locked (and, if they’re doing their job right, has tamper-proof seals on it) to prevent the sort of casual tampering capable with the Diebold machines. This is the big difference.
Understood. FWIW, I’m a PhD student studying Computer Science .
I’ll admit I’m not well read on how the Diebold systems work; I’ll even concede they may very well have security issues. However, my original point was with regard to the idea of blaming electronic systems for candidates losing. The answer isn’t to say “Diebold is flawed, let’s go back to paper ballots”, the answer is “the current solution is flawed, let’s improve it”. Regardless of whether Diebold or another company is currently implementing a reasonable solution, it is demonstable that an electronic voting system that is more accurate, more secure, simpler, and faster than a paper ballot system is well within today’s technological limits.
What gets me is the technophobic ignorance that launched this pit thread in the first place: “Electronic voting machines are a threat to our democracy.” This kind of stupidity threatens our democracy just as much as flawed. If those accusations are true about Diebold, heads should roll, but don’t scrap the whole idea just because one company is run by or employs a bunch of tools.
You realize, of course, that that article was written in 2003. And that the Diebold Accuvote system has gone through several upgrades since that time. Right?
In fact, here in Ohio, for any electronic voting machine to be certified by the Sec State, a verifiable paper trail is a mandatory feature. Machines lacking such won’t even be considered for purchase.
I full-heartedly agree; if even one vote can be changed, added, or misinterpretted, the it is not longer a valid return. This is exactly why paper ballots need to be eliminated; it is demonstratable that votes can be added, changed, or misinterpretted. Remember the whole “hanging chad” and “voter’s intention” arguments from 6 years ago?
If the current electronic voting system allows votes to be added or changed, which it very well may, then it should be scrapped as well. But clearly, going back to paper ballots isn’t the answer.
I just looked up a potential customer in Stone Mountain, Georgia. His office is on Memorial Drive. But part of Memorial Drive has been renamed “Cynthia McKinney Parkway”. I have no idea when they did this, but there really should be a law against naming public items (streets, schools, pornshops) after someone who is still alive.
On another point, relating all the way back to the OP; I think the source of this problem is the disconnectedness between the major political parties, especially the Democrats, and the people. In the link posted in the OP, Cynthia said:
This seems true because I’m always always seeing on the news, and from elected officials, and other such sources how opposed people are to the current administration, and yet, I live in a supposedly heavily democratic area (my county was very blue in the last presidential election), yet many of the people I meet and talk to don’t seem to share that perspective.
Now, I’m not trying to raise a political debate at all. I think what’s going on is that when a candidate like this loses and she thinks she has the pulse of the population; then the only way she thinks she could have lost is if there was voter fraud. Its a lot easier to blame someone/something else, especially Diebold (considering all the accusations of fraud on their behalf), than to admit she may have been wrong. Thus, I submit that maybe she is wrong, lost handily legitimately (or at least with not enough fraud to sway the election in the opposite direction), and picked an easy scapegoat because she* is a sore loser.
*Note, I’m not saying all Democrats are… just her in this case.
In 2000, there were plenty of accusations of fraud going back and forth until the Supreme Court stopped the recount. In 2004, I heard hardly a peep about potential fraud, despite the massive security holes uncovered before the election (linked upthread). If anything, I was suprised the issue got so little coverage beyond random mutterings on blogs. Now, Cynthia McKinney is alleging voter fraud, but she is a single nutjob with a history of saying stupid things to get attention. She quite easily fits the bill of a sore loser, but I don’t see how this incident indicates a sweeping pattern of baseless fraud allegations from the Democrats.
Of course, if one prefers partisan point-scoring to actual discussion, one could just as easily ask why only one side seems concerned about using a voting system shown to be insecure and easily tampered with?
That’s exactly it, I think there’s probably an equal amount of whining on both sides, the difference is the Democrats are losing the major elections, so they look like sore losers.
Going back to my sports analogy, no one seems to remember complaints about the officiating from the winners because, well, they won. I remember a lot more Monday morning conversations being based around the “[Insert losing team] would have won if it wasn’t for [Insert random bad call]. [Insert referee’s name] sucks; he must hate [Insert losing team].” form. Its a lot less often that you hear the “[Insert winning team] should have won by more if it wasn’t for [insert random bad call].” or “[Insert favorite team] only won because of the [insert random bad call] against the [Insert losing team].”
Its sort of a double standard, if the losing side complains, they sound like sore losers and people remember them as such; even moreso if the complain turns out not to be legitimate. If the winning side complains, they sound like they’re just trying to be fair; if their complaint isn’t legitimate, people just ignore it. So, if both sides are complaining equally, since the Democrats have lost the presidential election the last couple of times, they just end up looking like sore losers. Its just another stereotype, except instead of being based on race or sex or religion, its based on political party.
Granted, that was a mess. But were there any accusations of fraud by the Republicans in states that the Democrats won?
Granted, McKinney is a special case of crazy.
I am not trying to get involved in “partisan point-scoring,” but do you have a cite that shows that Republicans are eager to use a machine that they KNOW is easily tampered with and that they have no desire to fix the problem?
HAVA was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House & the Senate in 2002. HAVA established a fund to reimburse states for the costs of replacing lever operated and punch card voting machines with electronic versions. One of the features required of all electronic voting machines eligible for reimbursements out of this fund was a permanent paper record of each vote with a verifiable audit trail by 2006.
To characterize the desire to improve voting tabulation methods as a partisan issue is an unfair assessment.
That was not my intent (although my sentence could have made that more clear). I found Sarahfeena’s statement “why is it that the accusations of fraud come only come from one side?” to be pointless partisan sniping, considering the fact that numerous cites have already been given in this thread which give valid reasons to be concerned about the security of current electronic voting machines and the fact that accurate, democratic elections should not be a partisan issue.
It makes as much sense to assert that Democrats cry fraud every time they lose as it does to assert Republicans are unconcerned about having secure voting systems because they’ve been winning elections recently, which is to say, not much.
I guess you could interpret what I was saying as “partisan sniping,” but the fact is, no one has provided a cite that shows a Republican blaming a loss on electronic voting machines. So, why DO these complaints only come from one side?
I never said the Democrats “cry fraud every time,” only that they seem to do so from time to time, and the Republicans don’t.
Do you have more examples than the ones I listed? Because by my count, we have one election where both sides called fraud until one was declared the winner, one election where most Democrats did not cry fraud (despite well-documented security problems with the voting machinery), and McKinney.
Now, I’m not a Democrat but I do assert that there could have been fraud in the 2004 election. Because inadequate safeguards were put into place in the voting systems used in that election. In part, I believe, because people who raised security concerns were dismissed as conspiracy theorists or pre-emptive partisan sore losers. I doubt we’ll ever know if there was fraud. If there wasn’t, then we got lucky, but it’s a situation that needs to be fixed. Which won’t happen so long as discussions of election security are wrapped in partisan rags.
How long does it take us to catch on? How many times do issues of voting irregularities give off a stench before we take the obvious steps?
Level the voting field. All citizens should have equal access to their voting rights. This is simply impossible without Federal standards, funded and enforced. We must have a standard voting machine, with verifiable, paper-trail results. We can tabulate the results electronicly, but if there is any dispute as to vote count, we can take the laborious but certain path of paper ballot recount. Such a machine need not be any more complex than an adding machine. And a mandate should be made, and funded, that assures that no voter in America has to stand in line for 4 hours to vote if he’s poor
One hears the cry on the wind: another Big Government solution! Perhaps it is a philosophical disagreement, perhaps they are deeply committed to local control.
Or it could be that they simply would prefer not to have much, much larger numbers of potential Democratic voters.
Well, one logical explanation would be that fraud is only perpetrated by the other side.
But if I felt the urge to suggest that, I’d ask myself if partisan arguments were necessary, when we probably all agree that security in voting machines is a good idea. And can’t we also agree that Cynthia McKinney is a whackjob, and we’re lucky to have her gone, without blaming an entire political party for her?
I guess this is what I get for reading a political thread around here . . .
Well said. There is nothing to be gained by turning htis into a partisan issue. Election security is in everyone’s interest.
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