Jeb's sure to win the Congressional Medal of Honor for THIS

[Dead_Badger]

For “conspiracy failure” read “conspiracy theory”. Jeb Bush is in my keyboard…

[mhendo]

@John Mace

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.

I assume you’re talking about the case:

SOUTHWEST VOTER
REGISTRATION EDUCATION
PROJECT; SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN
LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE OF
GREATER LOS ANGELES; NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED
PEOPLE; CALIFORNIA STATE
CONFERENCE OF BRANCHES,

v.

KEVIN SHELLEY, in his official capacity
as California Secretary of State

better known as SVREP v. Shelley? This is the case referred to on the ACLU website.

You’re entitled to your opinion about what the ACLU’s motives might* have been. However, the ruling in the case makes clear that problems with the punch-card voting machines were the key issue in the case, as least as far as the judges were concerned.

From the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (warning: pdf):

On October 7, 2003, California voters will be asked to cast a ballot on some of the most important issues facing the State, including an unprecedented vote on the recall of a governor. However, forty-four percent of the electorate will be forced to use a voting system so flawed that the Secretary of State has officially deemed it “unacceptable” and banned its use in all future elections. The inherent defects in the system are such that approximately 40,000 voters who travel to the polls and cast their ballot will not have their vote counted at all. Compounding the problem is the fact that approximately a quarter of the state’s polling places will not be operational because election officials have insufficient time to get them ready for the special election, and that the sheer number of gubernatorial candidates will make the antiquated voting system far more difficult to use.

Plaintiffs allege that the use of the obsolete voting systems in some counties rather than others will deny voters equal protection of the laws in violation of the United States Constitution. They seek to postpone the vote until the next regularly scheduled statewide election six months from now, when the Secretary of State has assured that all counties will be using acceptable voting equipment, and all the polls will be open. We agree that the issuance of a preliminary injunction is warranted and reverse the order of the district court.

<snip>

Plaintiffs commenced the instant action seeking to enjoin the proposed election until it can be conducted without the use of any pre-scored punchcard voting systems.

<snip>

In this case, Plaintiffs allege that the fundamental right to have votes counted in the special recall election is infringed because the pre-scored punchcard voting systems used in some California counties are intractably afflicted with technologic dyscalculia. They claim that the propensity for error in these voting systems is at least two and a half times greater than for any other voting technology used in California. The effect is not trivial.

<snip>

Plaintiffs argue that the use of defective voting systems creates a substantial risk that votes will not be counted. In addition, they claim that the use of defective voting systems in some counties and the employment of far more accurate voting systems in other counties denies equal protection of the laws by impermissibly diluting voting strength of the voters in counties using defective voting systems. In short, the weight given to votes in non-punchcard counties is greater than the weight given to votes in punchcard counties because a higher proportion of the votes from punchcard counties are thrown out. Thus, the effect of using punchcard voting systems in some, but not all, counties, is to discriminate on the basis of geographic residence.

This is a classic voting rights equal protection claim.

<snip>

The State has an interest in holding a fair election – one trusted by the candidates and the voters to yield an accurate and unbiased result. The high error rate associated with the decertified machines to be used by 44 percent of the voters in October would undermine the public’s confidence in the outcome of the election. The margin of victory could well be less than the margin of error in the use of punchcard technology. This would not be the case in an election held in March 2004, when all the obsolete machines will have been totally withdrawn from use. Avoiding an election that promises to dilute the votes of any particular community – let alone communities with a disproportionately high concentration of minority voters – firmly promotes the public interest in a fair election.

The issue of ballot initiatives did come up in the judgment, to wit:

Normally, enjoining an election would require that a special election be held later, at great financial cost. But here, the election Plaintiffs seek to enjoin is itself a special election, and if enjoined, voting would occur at a regularly scheduled election. Thus, the great difference in cost between regularly scheduled and special elections is not as significant a factor as in the usual election case. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a burden and expense to the State in canceling the election, although the Secretary of State chose not to quantify this cost in his submissions. However, simply postponing a vote on the initiatives does not pose a significant extra burden on the Secretary of State. As we have noted, the Secretary of State originally set March 2, 2004 as the date for inclusion of the propositions on a statewide ballot. That is a regularly scheduled statewide election, so the extra burden of adding the initiative to the ballot would be insignificant. Further, the Secretary of State has already mailed information to the voters on the initiatives, so no additional expense would be incurred.

Thus, as to the question of voting on the initiatives, the balance of hardships tips sharply in favor of granting relief to the Plaintiffs. As to the gubernatorial recall, the balance of hardships is a closer question, but, in our judgment, slightly favors the Plaintiffs.

It seems clear to me from this decision that a key substantial issue being confronted by the court was that of equal protection. Of course, as an appeals court, this court spent most of its verdict dealing with what it saw as the errors of the District Court below it, but i can see little or nothing in this verdict to suggest that the ballot initiative was the only, or even the prime motivation behind the lawsuit.

And, even if it was, it does not absolve you of the dishonesty in your original statement, which implied that the ACLU had previously demonstrated some sort of absolute hostility to electronic voting machines, and that they are being hypocrites for demanding that Florida implement measures to ensure fair and equitable elections.

If i have the wrong case. please let me know.

[John_Mace]

@mhendo

You’re entitled to your opinion about what the ACLU’s motives might* have been. However, the ruling in the case makes clear that problems with the punch-card voting machines were the key issue in the case, as least as far as the judges were concerned.

And, even if it was, it does not absolve you of the dishonesty in your original statement, which implied that the ACLU had previously demonstrated some sort of absolute hostility to electronic voting machines, and that they are being hypocrites for demanding that Florida implement measures to ensure fair and equitable elections.

If i have the wrong case. please let me know.

Same case, but I was referring to the review by the entire 9th Circuit (shortly after the ruling you cited) which ruled that the election would, in fact, take place as scheduled. I’ll see if i can dig up a transcript (I watched the hearings live on TV), and you can judge for yourself what the ACLU’s motives were. It was not subtle at all. Like I said, the ACLU attorney was so blatant in his willingness to accept the hypothetic ruling of holding the recall election as planned but postponing the initiative vote that I couldn’t believe my ears.

You seem to have read more into my original post than was actually there. All I said was that I found it humorous to see them bashing electronic voting when they were touting it in the recent past. And, IIRC, same issues they are raising in FL were raised by their oppenents in CA less than a year ago.

Having seen them distort the advantages of electronic voting in CA, I am somewhat suspicious of their motives in pointing out disadvantages of electronic voting in this case. Maybe their motives are pure, but past history gives me reason for doubt.

[mhendo]

@John Mace

You seem to have read more into my original post than was actually there. All I said was that I found it humorous to see them bashing electronic voting when they were touting it in the recent past. And, IIRC, same issues they are raising in FL were raised by their oppenents in CA less than a year ago.

But the argument in the California case was not so much about whether electronic voting was good or not, but about whether the old punch-card system was bad. The equal protection argument, if i undertand it right, was simply that all voters should be using the same technology (whatever that technology happens to be).

Also, i can’t see from the current story where the ACLU is bashing electronic voting. As far as i can tell, they are simply asking that it me accompanied by a system that allows for backing up the data and ensuring that all votes are recorded correctly.

I have no problem with the basic principle of electronic voting. Like the ACLKU, however, i would lilke to be sure that the use of such voting systems doesn’t compromise the integrity of the process, and doesn’t disadvantage any particular group of people.

[chique]

@Kid_A

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?

I don’t get it, either. My old polling place used arrows, like this:

===…===> (Some guy’s name)

And you took the felt-tip pen they provided and filled in the space in the middle.

If they’re all fired up to do this electronic voting shit, how hard could it be to make them like ATM machines, complete with a receipt. I’m pretty sure Diebold makes the things; it shouldn’t be THIS freakin’ hard to modify one into a voting machine. You get the instant electronic tally as well as a paper trail.

[Typo_Negative]

@Dead Badger

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:

I work in data processing. I am having a LOT of difficulty believing that the information was not backed up by some other media before December 2003. With most sensitive data, there are several backups. *Especially * when using a new system. I find it very hard to believe that there aren’t multiple tape backups, printouts AND microfiche.

I am not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but you cannot tell me that NONE of the IT guys envisioned a system crash and insisted on a reliable backup of the data.

[manhattan]

Let me see if I’ve got the ‘theory of the crime’ right here, lissener. The Governor of Florida is trying to use the introduction of touch-screen voting to increase his influence over the outcome of elections. In order to do that, he ordered or otherwise encouraged the wholesale destruction of records from a two-year-old election which was clearly plagued by problems but the result of which was not disputed by the losing candidate and which resulted in a person of his own party winning the office and which is not subject to recount under existing Florida law. He did this despite the knowledge that doing so would vastly increase public scrutiny of an already-controversial system. Oh, and he’s an evil genius for thinking up and/or implementing this scheme before the coming Federal election instead of afterward when inquiries about elections prior to the presidential ones are likely to drop to near-zero. In fact, he was such a genius that he arranged it to occur not long after the legal requirement for keeping election records for local races in Florida had lapsed but cannily arranged for the elections commissioner not to disclose it until the 2004 campaign season. And he did it by having his own Secretary of State publicly criticize the elections commissioner responsible.

Is that pretty much it?

[Dead_Badger]

@spooje

I work in data processing. I am having a LOT of difficulty believing that the information was not backed up by some other media before December 2003. With most sensitive data, there are several backups. *Especially * when using a new system. I find it very hard to believe that there aren’t multiple tape backups, printouts AND microfiche.

I am not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but you cannot tell me that NONE of the IT guys envisioned a system crash and insisted on a reliable backup of the data.

I don’t know how they managed to end up without a backup whatsoever, and everything you say ought to be true of a competent outfit, but I long ago ceased to be surprised by tales of technical incompetence - particularly in the context of government IT. Take for example the UK police’s new computer system of a few years back. Massive cost, huge development effort, and yet somehow no-one thought to make it possible to cross-reference criminals by alias, making the entire thing essentially useless. We still don’t have a national database, and development started in 1995. I don’t see how this sort of cockup gets through, but it happened, and it happens an awful lot in public sector IT. It’s more than possible that some poor put-upon techie did indeed point out that backups are a good thing, only to have them nixed by some idiot with one eye on the budget and another on his navel.

I know it’s a cliche, but this is one of those examples where there’s a choice between malice and incompetence, and the latter just seems far more plausible, even if we don’t know exactly how it happened. I mean, look at what these people say:

In addition, state election officials have said technology does not exist to produce paper backups for electronic machines…

Riiiight. We’re dealing here with people who’ve not heard of the dot matrix, let alone the laser printer. And with this sort of genius in management, what on earth sort of techies do you think they’re attracting? It hardly bears thinking about.

[lee]

I don’t understand why there is so much opposition to a paper trail and recounts.

As for what this has to do with Jeb, well, there is the perception that if he and his family would be better served by inaccurately counted votes then he would fight to prevent a wide spread accurate count.

I would expect a sitting governor in the situation he was in in 2000 to better avoid looking partisan. If he had brought his power to bear when the results were perceived to be innaccurate to get a recount by methods and people that all could trust and throw light on the previous process, then we would not still have cartoons about hanging chads. Whether the perception is accurate or not it looked like he did what he could to help his brother regardless of the votes that had been cast.

I have seen recounts, sometimes they go the other way, sometimes the go the same, but never have I seen one with over 1000 or so votes come up exactly with the same tally on the second count. Any politician that opposes a fairly run recount looks like he really believes that he lost and the recount would reflect that.

Instead of using technology to make recounts easier, both machine and human recounts, technology companies and certain politicians have fought to outlaw paper trails and recounts.

Computers and printers make it possible for us to have readily readable paper trail. We could have it print out two copies of a cast ballot and give one to the voter and one to the ballot box. We could allow the voter to inspect the ballot and copy before the vote is placed in the ballot box. We could make it so that the ballots are readable by the computer as well as by a person so there could be a hand or computer recount. We could even use custom stock and ink to make votes difficult to forge. We could work on all of these things, but it seems we are not. It makes me question that those working on voting technologies have more interest in making it possible to control the results of an election rather than making elections as fair as possible.

[lissener]

@manhattan

Let me see if I’ve got the ‘theory of the crime’ right here, lissener. The Governor of Florida is trying to use the introduction of touch-screen voting to increase his influence over the outcome of elections. In order to do that, he ordered or otherwise encouraged the wholesale destruction of records from a two-year-old election which was clearly plagued by problems but the result of which was not disputed by the losing candidate and which resulted in a person of his own party winning the office and which is not subject to recount under existing Florida law. He did this despite the knowledge that doing so would vastly increase public scrutiny of an already-controversial system. Oh, and he’s an evil genius for thinking up and/or implementing this scheme before the coming Federal election instead of afterward when inquiries about elections prior to the presidential ones are likely to drop to near-zero. In fact, he was such a genius that he arranged it to occur not long after the legal requirement for keeping election records for local races in Florida had lapsed but cannily arranged for the elections commissioner not to disclose it until the 2004 campaign season. And he did it by having his own Secretary of State publicly criticize the elections commissioner responsible.

Is that pretty much it?

What’s that neocliche–“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing you he doesn’t exist”? Not the Jeb’s the devil; just an analogy.

The cry of the Bushies:
“Yeah, it happened on his watch, but he didn’t actually pull the trigger with his actual personal finger. Therefore he is innocent and truly good. A leader is not responsible for anything that happens under his administration, unless there are fingerprints and three eyewitnesses and a security camera videotape certified by the FBI.”

[Mehitabel]

There’s another thread here which can answer some of the basic Canuck questions about our voting system.

Quick n’ dirty answer: Not that simple; there’s all the Congressmen, buncha Senators, emergency elections, referendum questions, etc., on the ballot too, different numbers depending on the state. There’s no time or money to change it all now. We have forty pollworkers at my little site in the Bronx alone–eleven precincts, three to a machine, etc.

[Kid_A_1]

Mehitabel, so do all of these ballots look the same from the outside? Does the Presidential ballot look different from the one for Senators?

[rjung]

@lee

I don’t understand why there is so much opposition to a paper trail and recounts.

Because it’d make it much harder to steal elections, of course.

From a technical standpoint, there is nothing stopping us from making an idiot-proof, error-free, recountable, certifiable electronic voting system. A paper trail to facilitate recounts and sanity checks is trivially easy. Hell, you could bang together a system centered around a web browser, if you wanted to.

The only reason we don’t have an idiot-proof, error-free, recountable, certifiable electronic voting system is because certain Powers That Be don’t want them. Any other excuse falls apart once you cast a critical eye on it.

[chique]

@Kid_A

Mehitabel, so do all of these ballots look the same from the outside? Does the Presidential ballot look different from the one for Senators?

The thing is, Kid_A, there is no such thing as a standard ballot - different jurisdictions have different onces, hence the butterfly ballot over here, the hanging chads over there, and the mark-a-line version used at my old place.

In general, however, everything from president to dog catcher is on one ballot.

[Kid_A_1]

OK, I guess what I’m trying to get at was this:

What is the wrong with the idea of creating seperate ballots for each position? Each ballot can be marked on the back identifying what the position being voted on is. It can’t be that difficult to create this type of uniformity across a state, can it?

The ballot will then have a two little perforations that will be ripped on prior to the ballot being placed in the box. One gets kept by the voter to show that they voted, the other will be kept by the person manning the box, to show that said ballot has been placed in the box.

And putting a mark(probably a X) in a circle seems the easiest way to do it.

I’m hardly a technophobe and I would jump at the chance to convert the whole voting system to an electronic one, if it was proven to be reliable…but in this case where a system can be so easily corrupted, why not go back to basics?

One more thing, are there representatives from the “major” parties sitting in the polling area, to ensure that there is nothing funny going on?

[enipla]

@rjung

Because it’d make it much harder to steal elections, of course.

From a technical standpoint, there is nothing stopping us from making an idiot-proof, error-free, recountable, certifiable electronic voting system. A paper trail to facilitate recounts and sanity checks is trivially easy. Hell, you could bang together a system centered around a web browser, if you wanted to.

The only reason we don’t have an idiot-proof, error-free, recountable, certifiable electronic voting system is because certain Powers That Be don’t want them. Any other excuse falls apart once you cast a critical eye on it.

I couldn’t agree more. I’m a programmer, and I agree that this is just horse shit.

I can manage my bank accounts, buy plane tickets, buy a car, or find the shortest route between any two cities on the damn INTERNET for basically FREE.

These folks can’t come up with a secure easy to use system that increments a database based on user choices. And creates a redundant paper record? I’ll do it.

I love this -

In December, officials began backing up the data daily

Brilliant. Back up static data daily. It’s called archiving folks. Copy the data. Twice. Reconcile the copy. Store the medium in two different places. Done. This is basic computing 101 folks. First door on the left as you enter the building. Sheeeessss.

I can see it coming. They will back up the data daily, use the same tape and…oops. Golly the database went bad and we overwrote the last good ‘backup’. Just wait.

I heard that they are putting the data into Access. I really don’t have any problem with Access. But they are putting the data into a database that I can buy at WalMart? The future polices and direction of hundreds of millions of people are in a database that costs about $100.

I’ve been looking for a different quote I saw. But have not been able to find it. I swear some official said that they where now backing up the data to hard drives. :rolleyes: oops :smack: