Voting Machines Put U.S. Democracy At Risk

[JLB]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/19/Dobbs.Sept20/index.html

There are four main manufacturers of electronic voting systems, none of which has been demonstrated to be more secure than the others. Diebold is the most well-known, but a new Princeton University study concerning Diebold's AccuVote-TS machine found that hackers can easily tamper with electronic voting machines by installing a virus to disable machines and change the vote totals.

A 2005 Government Accountability Office report on electronic voting confirmed the worst fears of watchdog groups and election officials. That report said, "There is evidence that some of these concerns have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."

That is simply unacceptable. Congress and the White House need to immediately take steps to assure the integrity of electronic voting with paper trails that could be audited in any recount, or provisions must be made for paper ballots if the reliability of e-voting cannot be assured before November 7.

[shiva2999]

I was on this case FOUR years ago, but of course I was just an America hating conspiracy theorist.

[Meathead]

on this one you may have been right shiva

man this hurts me

but im afraid we just dont really want fair elections otherwise we would have done something about it. how can you conclude otherwise

[JLB]

I know the administration is doing what they can to regain your confidence.
The next elections are being taken care of as we speak.
Fairness to all legal voters no more dead people or criminals.
That might make it difficult for some but you gotta start somewhere.

[TMR2006]

but im afraid we just dont really want fair elections otherwise we would have done something about it. how can you conclude otherwise

People have been trying to do something about it, www.Moveon.org has been campaigning the issue for a looong while now. I know the group has got a real bum rap for being a bunch of terrorist-loving hippie-pinkos, but anyone who does care about the issue should at least sign the petition.

[shiva2999]

on this one you may have been right shiva

man this hurts me

but im afraid we just dont really want fair elections otherwise we would have done something about it. how can you conclude otherwise

I don't know if the thread's gone but I first posted a thread called "18,181 votes" a month after the 2002 midterms.

Five elections, all won unexpectedly by Republicans, all counted on EVM's, had the same winning vote total.

18,181 votes.

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/18181

That was the election where the exit polls were "not available" due to "problems".

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2002/pages/epolls/index.html

Take Georgia for example, the first state to be paperless EVM's state wide.

http://www.freepress.net/news/print.php?id=1437

All the President's votes?
From Independent.co.uk, October 13, 2003
By Andrew Gumbel

Something very odd happened in the mid-term elections in Georgia last November. On the eve of the vote, opinion polls showed Roy Barnes, the incumbent Democratic governor, leading by between nine and 11 points. In a somewhat closer, keenly watched Senate race, polls indicated that Max Cleland, the popular Democrat up for re-election, was ahead by two to five points against his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss.

Those figures were more or less what political experts would have expected in state with a long tradition of electing Democrats to statewide office. But then the results came in, and all of Georgia appeared to have been turned upside down. Barnes lost the governorship to the Republican, Sonny Perdue, 46 per cent to 51 per cent, a swing of as much as 16 percentage points from the last opinion polls. Cleland lost to Chambliss 46 per cent to 53, a last-minute swing of 9 to 12 points.

...more...

[Meathead]

yeah people have been trying

some people

we the people havent decided to take them up on the offer

therefore we either dont believe it or we dont want it

i used to think it was the former and now im starting to wonder if it really is the latter

and i only use wonder cuz i think im in denial

[Gibby]

I was on this case FOUR years ago, but of course I was just an America hating conspiracy theorist.

Meat's right. On this one you were actually right.

on this one you may have been right shiva

man this hurts me

but im afraid we just dont really want fair elections otherwise we would have done something about it. how can you conclude otherwise

Yup and it doesn't help that Diebold's founder said we will deliver Bush the votes.

[Green Lantern]

The urge to Empire is a bigger threat to our democracy than voting machines, I think.

[sukie]

So I would assume you have a list of all these new territories that fly under the US flag... Hmmmmm?

[Gibby]

So I would assume you have a list of all these new territories that fly under the US flag... Hmmmmm?

Okay well lets talk about new puppet regimes. Iraq, Ukraine, Georgia, Afghanistan. See you may dispute Ukraine and Georgia but we pretty much interfered and corrupted the elections of a sovereign state to stick it to the Russians. I'm not in approval of the Belorussian government but I am glad that they cracked down on the Yankee backed opposition movement. Sometimes its not about flags but about influence. I'm also sure the Americans had a hand in the recent Mexican and Canadien elections.

[Gibby]

The urge to Empire is a bigger threat to our democracy than voting machines, I think.

In some ways they go hand in hand.

[sukie]

Okay well lets talk about new puppet regimes. Iraq, Ukraine, Georgia, Afghanistan. See you may dispute Ukraine and Georgia but we pretty much interfered and corrupted the elections of a sovereign state to stick it to the Russians. I'm not in approval of the Belorussian government but I am glad that they cracked down on the Yankee backed opposition movement. Sometimes its not about flags but about influence. I'm also sure the Americans had a hand in the recent Mexican and Canadien elections.

No us flags flying over those counties ant to call them puppet regimes is like calling all our allies the same.

[Gibby]

No us flags flying over those counties ant to call them puppet regimes is like calling all our allies the same.

Well in their cases it could be argued that they are satellites. Mexico, Canada, the NATO countries no. Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, and Georgia yes.

[sukie]

Bullshit

[Green Lantern]

So I would assume you have a list of all these new territories that fly under the US flag... Hmmmmm?

Sukie, I hate to tell you but you are living in the past. There are no more flags in modern Empire, not since the end of WWII. Just as there are no more visible shackles on slaves.

History will record these things nonetheless.

[sukie]

When was it decreed that flags were not in vogue? or was it that emperical expansion just ended with WWII?

[Green Lantern]

Sukie,

A long time ago, you controlled people to control power. You got slaves and made them work for you and you accumulated the effort of others: more power in one hand.

Then we progressed to land and natural resources being a continuation of that power. Countries went around grabbing up other countries and their people and amplified power.

All that is out of vogue now, yes. But people still go around collecting, monopolizing and amplifying power. Colonization was great for business but Great Britian as a government lost money every year. Stationing troops to hold onto land is an expensive proposition. Smart people have moved on from that. Power is moving toward information collection/control and technology. With those types of levers to pull on, who needs to control a country?

Times have changed. When people write of abuse and power and control and empire and neo-colonization; and they will, it is right there now to look at if you want to see it in the terms people will talk about it in the future; things like Iraq and Afghanistan will be anomolies.

[Gibby]

Sukie,

A long time ago, you controlled people to control power. You got slaves and made them work for you and you accumulated the effort of others: more power in one hand.

Then we progressed to land and natural resources being a continuation of that power. Countries went around grabbing up other countries and their people and amplified power.

All that is out of vogue now, yes. But people still go around collecting, monopolizing and amplifying power. Colonization was great for business but Great Britian as a government lost money every year. Stationing troops to hold onto land is an expensive proposition. Smart people have moved on from that. Power is moving toward information collection/control and technology. With those types of levers to pull on, who needs to control a country?

Times have changed. When people write of abuse and power and control and empire and neo-colonization; and they will, it is right there now to look at if you want to see it in the terms people will talk about it in the future; things like Iraq and Afghanistan will be anomolies.


well put, unfortunately sukie can be a wingnut even when he should really know better.

[sukie]

Please... then we control India with all the tech outsourcing, Right?

[Green Lantern]

Please... then we control India with all the tech outsourcing, Right?

That is still a backward look.

We control the tech....who cares where the people work. I know people in the microchip industry, we are on the cutting edge of invention and then we sell our later generation stuff and it's patents off to the Japanese or whomever the highest bidder is since we can't compete in the production end of it. We are still king. We make it, they buy it...but we make it... and without us, there is nothing else.

[JLB]

That is still a backward look.

We control the tech....who cares where the people work. I know people in the microchip industry, we are on the cutting edge of invention and then we sell our later generation stuff and it's patents off to the Japanese or whomever the highest bidder is since we can't compete in the production end of it. We are still king. We make it, they buy it...but we make it... and without us, there is nothing else.

We kick ass!!!

[Ralonzo]

I'm not in approval of the Belorussian government but I am glad that they cracked down on the Yankee backed opposition movement.

Yankee backed? Oh, you mean George Soros-backed. You know, the moveon sugar daddy funding a list of lefty 527's longer than Joe McCarthy's list of Hollywood reds. He's as much of a Yankee as, umm, Julius Rosenberg?

For all the incessant bleating about Diebold this, and Rove that, here's what doesn't fit into this equation: Who is fighting the hardest to make it illegal to ascertain that one is actually a United States citizen before casting a ballot? Now why would a political party want to do that? Hmmm. It's puzzling.

I know! Let's ask former Chicago Mayor Richard J Daley. We can catch up with him on the way out of the polling place on November 7. Sure, he died in 1976, but nobody's going to be asking him for his ID...

[JLB]

Why does Chicago allow all these dead people to vote?