In this instance I was actually looking out for you. Some GD denizens will not be so sympathetic to someone who starts a thread and says “I’m not going to give any cites here for this information”. I believe you’ve already seen one. By the way, check spelling: iampunha. Note the A and NH.
::wanders off to Google a recipe for thicker skin::
And? I find it very interesting that something is only a “threat” if it is connected to a corporation or pressure group that disagrees with the alarmist’s political dogmas. If the makers of these machines were charter members of the Wobblies, I flat-out deny that you would have cared a bit.
What evidence do you have that these machines will be the venue of electoral fraud? How are your claims any different from claims made by right-wing tinfoil-hatters that Bill Clinton was going to cancel the 2000 elections?
I’ve an alternative for the fellow:
Please elucidate specifically how this is not just another “Diebold has already promished the election to Bush” conspiracy theory.
I expect the Evil Bush Administration[sup]TM[/sup] to ban the use of computerized voting machines. Everybody knows (no cite forthcoming) that ALL computer programmers are liberal Democrats. Clearly, if automated voting is allowed the programmers will rig the results against the Pubbies and they’ll steal a victory that was rightfully Bush’s.
impunha: sorry for the previous misspelling. May earlier question was not asked in anger by the way. But I agree I am entirely to sensitive and need to work on thickening my skin.
Dogface: I would not care if the machines were made by the Friends of Bill or Ralph Nader. I still would be leary of the validity of the results. I am unfamiliar with the conspiracy theory you accuse me of ascribing to, so I cannot say how my ideas differ. I think my comments were pretty general, I did not accuse any specific company of wrong doing. If you need a cite try this one
dalej42 named the specific conspiracy theory. How is your claim different from that theory, that Diebold will intentionally manipulate election results? What evidence is there that this will be done?
You have flat-out stated that you think that the “Commander in thief” will be “handed” victory on whatever terms he wants by these machines. So where is your evidence to that effect?
Toward that end I’d suggest (and you can do with this suggestion as you like) sticking to the social fora: MPSIMS and IMHO, with a touch of CS thrown in as something of a primer for GD. You’ve seen what can happen in the Pit; it’s not for the thin of skin. Hell, sometimes it ain’t for the thick of skin, either.
Mechanical voting machines have been widely used in the past. These registered on a mechanical counter when a voter pulled a lever for a candidate. There could be no recounting with these, there was no paper trail to recount.
By the way - your user name is a good one! You certainly are askeptical.
While I do think that GWB will be handed the next election on the same silver platter that was used to deliver everything else he has been given,(Sorry I havn’t got a cite, that is just my opinion. You do not suggest that I am not entitled to an opinion without a cite, do you?) I don’t think he will need to rely on tampering with voting machines. In my OPINION he will win by a landslide. All he has to do is say (from way out in left field) we are going to Mars. All the sheep will say “Gosh, he is so Presidential” and ignore reality in favor of the fantasy they want to believe. It does not matter that he said it in a semi important speech like the State of the Union, and never mentions it again. It does not matter that he denies saying Sadam was linked to AQ, and Colin Powell now says their is no proof of the link. It does not matter that Rumsfield gets cought in a lie on national TV. Damn see how easy it is to get me started ranting?
But the point of my original post did not mention any of the above, I was merely suggesting that computer controlled vote tabulation is not, in my dumb ass opinion, a good idea, considering the potential for abuse by any number of people.
My own feeling is even if the evil Democrats somehow manage to hack into the system and cause the vote count to be Kerry by 40 million votes, the Supreme Court will step in and say the result is unreliable and so GWB will be pres for another four, then Jeb for eight, for the sake of stability during the War on terror.
That was almost witty…
Do you have a problem with computerized voting? If so, why not come right out with it rather than dress it up with all the “Bush is Evil Incarnate” kind of statements? If your issue is just that you hate Bush and want everyone to be aware of it, then why not join the “Reeder Bush Bashing” thread in the pit? You might find a home there.
In any event, please let me know what you would like to debate.
Regards
Testy
That is not what you wrote. You wrote, I quote:
Thus, you specifically mention the use of voting machines as a means of electoral fraud.
And what, specifically, prevented you from saying such a straightforward, up-front, and easy to understand thing as this right off the bat in the first place?
That would be Carvell, right? I tend to prefer to look at what the good Democrats are doing
And now you engage in double-talk. FIRST you say that you say nothing at all about how the voting machines will be used to “hand” the election to Bush, now you say that this is EXACTLY what you are saying.
Okay, you have made a specific accusation of what will happen. Give some evidence to back up your accusation. Give some evidence to show that this is not just another tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory on the same leve as “Bill Clinton will stop the 2000 elections from happening.” Until you do so, then your prediction is every bit as valid.
First of all, the computerized voting machines are not going to be on one gigantic network. So if either party wanted to hack the machines to influence the election, they would need to individually hack each and every machine.
Second, the company that manufactures the machines really can’t have much influence in how the machines count specific candidates. Along with the Presidential contest, there are usually a buttload of State, County, and City elections/issues being decided on election day. That means that the ballots are going to be individually tailored depending on the location of the machine. The ballot programming will therefore be handled at the local level. So for and Presidential tampering to have an effect, that tampering would have to be spread throughout a gazillion little voting districts. Ain’t gonna happen.
Even if the manufacturer programmed the machines to specifically add votes for Bush, their game is going to be exposed in 2008 when, in the race between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole, the machines declare George W. Bush the winner in a landslide.
Testy: I do apologize for muddling my primary concern regarding the potential danger of computerized voting machines, with my personal frustrations regarding President Bush. I did not post this in “reeder Bush Bashing” thread because I am not Reeder. I do not think there is anything evil about President Bush, from what I have heard he was a great guy to party with. But if you can see your way past my rhetoric, the issue I wish to discuss is the dangers of computerized vote counting. I will try to tone down the rhetoric though.
Dogface:Here is a link I would really appreciate any honest feedback, other than “that lying liberal scum…bla bla bla” I do not know what to make of the claims of the site. If you can disprove the claims made I will certainly sleep better.
askeptic, the link you provided is to the Greg Palast home page, not to a specific article. Could you link one? I went through the archive and found one about this issue. It was an interview from Hustler magazine (which makes me want to make a joke about The Old Gray Lady), and had statements such as “You may have already voted in 2004; they just haven’t told you how.” but no facts to back it up.
Is that what we’re supposed to debunk?
A bit of reading. His accusations of what “will” happen have no evidence to back them up. He’s also far too eager to ascribe to conspiracy what can be better explained by simple thoughtlessness. Rare, indeed, is the person honest and honorable enough to admit to having bias. Most common are those of us who presume that our prejudices are not only true, but are self-evident, and anyone who dares disagree is part of some sort of “conspiracy”, an idiot, or outright evil. Likewise, we prefer to believe that every and all government activities that do not turn out to our liking MUST be a result of an evil conspiracy. After all, since our prejudices are not only true but are self-evident, what else could explain it.
Here is what can be verified:
1: All states are required to computerize voter lists.
2: In Florida, individuals purged from the lists were disproportionately of demographics that tend to vote democrat.
3: In Texas and Florida, use of computerized voting machines has led to suspicious results.
Now, from this single instance (aka an “anecdote”–insufficient data to draw a rational conclusion), somebody has determined that ALL states are 100% utterly and totally IDENTICAL to Florida and the commputerization of voter lists will end up with 100% totally and utterly IDENTICAL results. I rather doubt this. The conclusion ignores a great deal of unique local history. Florida and Texas hardly have a great history of electoral fairness, and ballot box diddling was NOT invented in those states specifically by electronic voting machines. However, a demagogue prefers to refer to worst-case scenarios as the only possible outcome. In other words, from what I can tell, the voting machines only make more apparent old corruption that had hitherto been very hard to spot. That explanation works just as well as scaremongering.
There is a difference between concern and scaremongering. I see insufficient evidence that electronic voting will be used as you claim that it ABSOLUTELY WILL be used–and you have specifically made such a claim (which I quoted), no matter how much you may try to deny it.
askeptic:
Yes, the current batch of touch-screen machines, which Diebold and others have rolled out, are bad. They are susceptible to high-tech and low-tech hacks of all kinds, from reprogramming to simple destruction of data, from any and all parties. Could secure touch-screen machines have been built? Yep. Is all this a threat to our elections system? Damn straight. Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, etc., should all be concerned. If American history has shown us anything (I’m writing from NYC, home of Tammany Hall), it’s that, given the chance, any political party will tamper with the ballots, and we should do everything in our power to stop it from happening. But we’re lazy and shortsighted, and Florida 2000 will likely look like a well-run system compared to some future elections.
Unfortunately, I think this has to have been discussed here about a billion times before. What’s the new angle?
I actually think this is an interesting topic, if one removes the unfortunate political side the OP is couching the question in.
In the closed thread iampunha links to, acaveman goes with the premise that “anything can be hacked,” and therefore using computerized voting systems is opening the U.S. up to a whole new dimension of voting manipulation. Really Not All That Bright points out that it wouldn’t take a massive conspiracy to change the results of an election, just one savvy hacker who is doing it for no other reason than to have a bit of fun.
It’s a pretty standard rule that any computerized system can be hacked these days, with enough time and effort, and the higher-profile the system, the higher the likelihood that it will be attacked. Well, you don’t get much more high-profile than the system that determines our country’s political future. I think it’s obvious to most that any computerized voting system will quickly make a target of itself to hackers out for a bit of fun.
However, in the interest of more substantive discussion, let’s look at just how vulnerable these new electronic voting systems are. A quick search found this article, which discusses the Diebold system specifically. I’m not interested in the conspiracy-theory side of the argument, but the technical side of it frightens me.
I work at a technology company that operates similar to this… and while I love the people I work with, I would not want the political future of America staked on the stability of our technology. That just doesn’t add up.
The Salon article led me to find the Black Box Voting website, which discusses this very issue. Some interesting snippets from the front page:
An computer-science professor and election judge in Maryland also wrote an article on the BBV site, which I found a little disconcerting:
Bolding mine… apparently there are no procedures in place for what to do about known security flaws when they are exploited.
Perhaps the most frightening conclusion the Maryland judge reached:
He goes on to point out that there are “well-funded foreign powers” (to which I might add well-funded domestic powers as well) which would be quite pleased to pay a programmer to hack the voting system and manipulate the election. I think this goes without saying.
Computerized “e-voting” seems to solve some problems, but opens up the can on a whole lot more. Security flaws have been identified, but apparently aren’t important enough to address. The idea of “hacking” (manipulating) the system is one that required significant effort of many people in the paper-based system, but wouldn’t require so much for an electronic system. What it comes down to, for me, is that they’re replacing a system which has multiple points of failure and replacing it with one that has a single point of failure. And that single point doesn’t seem to be particularly stable, yet.
Finally, even if the system were perfect (which it doesn’t seem to be), many people’s perception of it is that it is flawed. This leads to doubt, and doubt will tear the election apart in November. Have we really fixed the problems that plagued us in 2000, or will we just see a repeat of it in 2004, with different excuses for why the system failed? No matter who wins, it seems to me that using a system which is already doubtful simply invites a repeat of the 2000 election.
So, do e-voting systems actually solve anything? Or do they just give us a different set of problems, resulting in the same lack of confidence in the vote? I’m not sure, but my feeling leans toward the latter conclusion.
Just speaking as a software engineer and all-around computer geek, I don’t care who makes the machines, I simply refuse to cast an electronic vote on any setup that does not provide a human-verifiable way to double-check the results.
The ultimate “spare tire” for any voting system is to have several folks sit down with a pile of ballots, read each one by hand, and count the results. Any system that doesn’t provide a backup of this nature is inherently untrustworthy IMO and should not be used.
One point on your list of flaws that I disagree with. The part about Diebold publishing the code. I believe the source should be published and should be as simple as is humanly possible to make it. A serious effort should be made to forbid adding “bells and whistles” to the code.
Given public access to the source, many people would be able to see what was going on. Security by obfuscation would be a really bad idea for voting machines.
Regards
Testy