Here’s the Yahoo/AP link for the Teemings who don’t subscribe to the NYT:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&e=4&u=/ap/20040728/ap_on_el_ge/florida_voting
Meh.
OK, I don’t get it. What’s the problem with putting an X on a piece of paper? It works pretty well up here. What’s wrong with the old fashioned paper and pencil?
Thanks Munch; wasn’t thinking.
That Jeb must be one lousy computer programmer. Even the reporter was too ashamed to mention him.
I’ve often wondered the same thing.
In Australia, where i’m from, we mark the ballots by hand, and they are counted by hand. But somehow, we still manage to know the results of the election within 24 hours (and sometimes within 12) of the end of voting. And this in a country where compulsory voting means that the turnout is always at least 95% of the voting-age population.
I have nothing in principle against computer voting, but i really don’t think that enough safeguards are currently in place.
I find it amusing that the ACLU is all hot and bothered about potential abuse by electronic voting machines now, when less than a year ago they were trying to postpone the elections here in CA because some counties DIDN’T have electronic voting machines.
Yes, because as everyone knows, in the face of constantyly changing, and untested, technology, you choose a position based on earlier versions of that technology and then STICK TO IT, not matter how the technology evolves, or what experience teaches us about the bugs in that technology.
Hey, works for the Amish.
What a beautifully dishonest post.
The reason that the ACLU sought to postpone the California elections was not specifically that certain counties did not have electronic machines, but that certain counties were still using punch card machines that had been demonstrated to be defective.
Also, if you look at the story cited in the OP, you’ll see that the ACLU is simply asking that appropriate safeguards be put in place to ensure that everyone’s vote is recorded accurately, and that there is a backup system in case the main electronic record database is lost or compromised, as happened in Miami-Dade County.
Despite your silly suggestions to the contrary, the ACLU is not being at all inconsistent or hypocrticial. It is following it’s long-standing practice of attempting to ensure that elections are carried out in a manner that s fair and accountable.
I know it is hyperbole, but the Subject line of this thread is ridiculous.
Please cut the ACLU some slack. It is one of the few remaining advocates for civil liberties with any political clout.
What the a lot of critics (like myself, and I believe the ACLU also fights this practice) have problems with is not always technology, it’s the use of mixed technologies in a single state.
If you have a votiing method with 99.99999999% accuracy rate in counties with a large majority of voters for a specific party, and a method that is 98% accurate in counties with a large majority for the other party (no, I don’t give a damned which party is which in the above scenario), there is a fundamental problem, and you can’t consider the voter’s rights in both counties to be equally addressed.
I think most of us are willing to cut the vote counters a bit of slack, as long as the mistakes are both minimal and universal. They’re not, so they’re being criticized.
I don’t care if you use scraps of paper with boxes on them, punch cards, mind readers, lie detectors, or electronic terminals, just as long as they are dependable (hello, backups?), accurate, auditable (paper trail), and most of all, universally used within that state. It’s starting to look like distribution of voting technologies will replace gerrymandering as the next big thing to keep seats in one party.
Perhaps I haven’t had enough coffee today. I can’t figure out what this has to do with Jeb Bush. Could someone explain it to me slowly (using small words)?
Why are there so many people on this board who thinks “plausible deniability” is the same thing as innocence?
I mean, plausible deniability is how mob bosses stay out of jail: they delegate the dirty work. Jeb is the Godfather of Florida; the Bush clan is like the Corleones: a goverment of backroom favors and “clean” hands.
You are simply wrong, I’m afraid. I watched to ACLU’s lawyer make his arguments in the CA case, and he most certainly did not make the case that the punch card machines were defective. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the ACLU was trying to postpone the CA election so that the Racial Privacy Initiative would not be voted on at the same time as the CA governership. In fact the guy tipped his hand when one of the judges asked him if he’d be satisfied if the electronic machines were used in Nov as long as the initiative was not on the ballot. He jumped on that suggestion like a hungry dog on a bone.
I’m sure the ACLU champions many worthy causes. The CA election delay was not one of them. They lost of my respect over that case-- they brazenly used a false pretext, with potiential great harm to the CA politial process, in order to advance their own social agenda.
These things are stored on a computer? Without backups? Or paper trail? Is anyone else terrified?
Um, raise your hand if YEAH!
It’s a brilliant setup for plausible deniability; no trail, no dirt on anyone’s hands.
Much as in the Lance Armstrong thread, I’m forced to ask why there are so many people who think that “tenuous accusation” is the same thing as guilt.
Right, and innocence is how the rest of us manage it. Just how omnipotent do you think Jeb us? Computer failure is not something that requires a conspiracy failure to explain it, and certainly not if this quote is indicative of the competence level:
Only after they lose a shedload of data do they think about making backups? Sheesh. That’s not a conspiracy, that’s just stupid.