There has been a lot of talk, on the SDMB and elsewhere, about the paperless voting machines being used in many states, the last minute mysterious software patches to them, the fact that the company that makes them is partially owned by one or more Romneys, etc.
Now, obviously, this all sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory, full of vague mysterious-sounding connections and implications-by-association. But, as long as everyone involved is being sensible, it’s usually pretty damn easy to show that CTs are full of crap; by Occam’s razor if nothing else.
So… someone talk me down here. Convince me that this is nonsense, that I’m all worried over nothing.
Side note: part of what’s so bad about this issue, like the issue of voter ID laws, is that there’s no way to actually be certain what’s happening. So if Obama wins on Tuesday, that will in and of itself in no way prove that there was nothing fishy going on. It will certainly make it a fair bit less likely (I mean, what would be the point of setting up the ability to steal a presidential election and then not doing so?) but it’s certainly plausible that the people behind this, if there’s a “this” at all, are cautious enough to keep any chicanery within the margin of fuzz surrounding exit polls and so forth. That said, if the official vote tallies in a bunch of relevant states end up lining up pretty much exactly with exit polls and various people’s models of expectation, I’ll feel a lot better about things, even if Romney wins.
Fun Fact: Election Systems & Software, the company that made the very recent ‘experimental’ software patch for Ohio’s vote-tabulating machines, is located at
11208 John Galt Boulevard
Omaha, NE 68137
At least, according to Google Maps. John Galt Blvd. Nice.
You are worrying about nothing…and there is absolutely nothing that anyone can say or evidence that anyone can present that will convince you otherwise. Just the way it is, unfortunately. To me this boils down to two parts neo-Luddite like fears and distrust of technology and three parts anti-big business/fear of corporate America in the Republicans pocket, coupled with a disregard of the fact that the Democrats also have a stake in all this and aren’t sitting passively by when these machines are deployed. Oh, and as you pointed out, a healthy measure of CT, as seen in the mysterious patches and John Galt ave innuendo.
I’m heavily involved in the actual logistics of voting in New Mexico, and it’s laughable that any one party could dominate the process so much that they could systematically manipulate the vote in a substantially different way to vote manipulation in the past. The funny thing is that there are more issues with votes being lost, dropped, thrown out or otherwise not counted because of errors in the process and the people doing it. What you should be worried about is the level of training for the folks running the elections, not the machines, because that’s where the real issue is.
The 2005 election in Germany was ruled unconstitutional because of the unreliability of voting machines. Is there any particular reason you think computer scientists are wrong about this, even the ones who have hacked the machines themselves?
That’s a pretty condescending and obnoxious attitude, given that I started a thread for the sole and precise purpose of challenging and questioning my own position.
The “mysterious patches” are exactly that if they have not been certified or tested, and if you’d RTFA, you’d know they haven’t been. And as for being paranoid, gee, I don’t know what pattern of behavior these past couple of months could’ve put me in THAT mindset. It’s not as if I’m stocking up on ammo and canned goods, I’m simply worrying about a pattern of activity and odd occurrences.
Further, if an organization sets itself up on John Galt Blvd, and they’re involved in politics, that’s something to take note of. That organization is not neutral, unless they had the world’s worst luck, and the world’s worst judgement, to set up shop on John Galt Blvd by happenstance. Innuendo my ass, I’m flat-out saying they’re biased, it’s only a matter of if/how they act on it. Refresh my memory, would you? I seem to recall someone on the Republican presidential ticket being an outspoken fan of Ayn Rand.
I’m growing less worried by the hour, though, as confidence in Ohio’s results grows. If someone tried to fudge results by a large margin, I think they’d get caught. Fudging only works, undetected, in small amounts, otherwise it’s too obvious. At least, that’s my hope. I’m not a Luddite: I used to think that electronic voting was the natural progression of things. Easier & faster to count, what’s not to like? That was before I realized how incompetent and corrupt people are.
I’ve never been able to get a satisfactory answer out of this. Apparently we’re culturally unsuited to the idea of waiting for paper ballots to be hand counted.
This is why I advocate optical scanning of paper ballots. Something that can be hand counted if needed, tabulates quickly otherwise, and easy enough to fill out if you’ve ever taken a standardized test or used a scantron sheet in school.
On the other hand, an organization that has nefarious plans to bias the results to Republicans would have to pretty incompetent to draw attention to themselves in such a way. Or is it a double bluff? They might as well call the company “Right Wing Vote Flipping Machines Inc.”
As long as there are safeguards such as running them through separate machines from different vendors, having dumb machines that can’t associate a bubble number with a party or issue, and hand-count spot checks.
I just don’t get the disadvantage of having paper and electronic. It doesn’t take any longer to print or anything. It prints your choice as soon as you vote for each office. Sure, it sticks around a bit so you can check it before you leave, but it’s not like anyone checks any more than president and congress, which takes maybe a second or two. Then the paper goes in the machine’s ballot box as you walk away and the next person comes up. By the time they even start voting, the paper is gone.
And it’s not like you even have to even count the paper unless there’s a challenge. Most of the time, there won’t be.
The idea that people who are against electronic voting are “Luddites” is laughable. The most strident opponents of electronic voting (in its current form, anyway) are very technologically savvy.
The simple facts of the matter are this: In many areas, electronic voting machines are in use that almost certainly can be hacked very easily to change election results without any way of telling what has been done.
Whether or not the fox has actually used the keys he’s been given to the henhouse is currently unknown. People who wish to look for bloody feathers are being called conspiracy theorists or paranoid.
