posted
I've been scared by the implications of the Diebold voting system since the last presidential election and I'm not sure why it's not getting more mainstream media coverage. Even if Diebold is innocent in NH (and it would be a pretty big coincidence that Hillary won by virtue of the Diebold precincts alone), the POTENTIAL to hack into these systems exists, is known, and is great.
There is no paper trail by default, and while we could add a paper trail, it still remains that without some overwhelming reason, that paper trail will never get counted. Personally, I'm not only in favor of a paper trail, but also random hand counts in different precincts to help ensure the accuracy of the results.
The trouble is, me being in favor of things doesn't mean much. I'm really not sure who to start writing incessantly to see this fixed and I'm also not sure how to get a public outcry without the help of mainstream media. Most people I talk to about this are not willing to accept the idea that their democracy could be undermined so easily.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: How do we fix this right now?
Kate's suggestion is a very good place to start, but it isn't enough, if you discover that your particular precinct is okay, to stop there. This is a national problem. Writing your representatives would be a good step too, but something needs to catapult this into the national consciousness as a problem. I'm not sure how to bring that about.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Nah. The parent corporations of the media companies are pushing for media consolidation -- including pre-censoring the Web -- and Republicans are necessary to force the regulations through.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey is expected to introduce an emergency bill to offer funding to states who switch from unreliable electronic voting machines to paper ballots and audits. MoveOn.org has a petition in favor of paper ballots which you can sign. It's going to be delivered to members of congress next week. Getting more names on that petition will help show congress that people care about this issue.
posted
Christine, if you email me where you live, I'll check around to see who to contact.
Noemon's right. We need to do both.
I just made a contribution to the Obama campaign (another little tiny one) and there are people who will match the donations. You have the opportunity to send a message to that person. I just asked him to check his voting machines. He probably thinks I'm a nut!
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote: According to my sources, LHS Marketing and Sales Director Ken Hajjar grew up with owner John Silvestro in Lawrence, Massachusetts. They both moved to Londonderry, New Hampshire, where Ken Hajjar was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to "sale / CND" and sentenced to 12 months in the Rockingham County Correctional facility, and fined $2000. As things go for the politically connected, he was then given a deferred sentence and $1000 of his fine was suspended.
quote:Hajjar totes memory cards around in the trunk of his car and defends the boggling concept of swapping out memory cards during the middle of elections.
The town of Sutton in NH showed Ron Paul with 0 votes. However, 31 people came forward who voted for Paul and the totals where changed to 31. From BlackBoxVoting:
quote: just got off the phone with Jennifer Call, Town Clerk for Sutton. She confirmed that the Ron Paul totals in Sutton were actually 31, and said that they were "left off the tally sheet" and it was human error.
This is not an acceptable answer, especially because one of the most common forms of fraud in a hand count system is to alter or omit results on the reporting sheet. Hand count is lovely, transparent. They then fill out another reconciliation sheet, often in front of witnesses, and it looks fine. Then they provide a summary or media sheet with the incorrect results.
Some of Paul's supporters think this is widespread. The conspiracy goes that the election was stolen from Obama and Paul's success was downplayed. Altho I have seen Fox News take AP stories and edit out Paul's name before they posted the article on their website, I think his NH certified votes were legit. He was within 1% of Giulianni and McCain has done well before in NH.
I am getting excited that Paul is not completely dead in this election. His ideas on a humble foreign policy, fiscal responsibility, and individual rights will continue to be in the republican debates.
If Paul claims election fraud it will be a mortal blow to his campaign. Thankfully it looks like one of the lesser candidates will be asking for a voter recount.
I think it will turn out within the margin of error. Who would try to steal an election with a paper trail when the cost of recounting is only $67K?
The recount is a good idea because it may again force the diebold security issues out into the public. Obama may find a pleasant surprise.
EDIT: added in an additional link.
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
The RonPaul folks know that voter fraud ain't a rumor: not when a district reports zero support for RonPaul, then suddenly "discovers" 31 votes when those who know they cast their votes in that district for RonPaul start complaining publicly.
If DHinMI actually believed "Enough with the 'Diebold Hacked the NH Primary' Lunacy", s/he would insist on a recount to prove to skeptics that the count was accurate instead of calling for continued ignorance through casting "nutcase conspiracy" aspersions.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Lem, look at the link I provided about Ron Paul vote counts. It raises even more suspicions than the 31 missing votes.
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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31 can be human error. At best he might get one more delegate and his reputation could get soiled. Huckabee might get more. On the hand count comparison Paul was down 2% and Huckabee was down like 2.33% (not exact numbers).
I am a Paul supporter and I don't know there was fraud--at least wide spread fraud. If you like conspiracies, I find it easier to believe that they stole minor votes in places like Stutton to get Paul supporters wired and force Paul to do a recount that makes him look bad.
It doesn't matter tho. I forgot his name, but I heard another candidate with like 170 votes is going to request a recount. It was the Green Party that requested a recount that showed fraud in Florida.
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:We have paper ballots that are electronically scanned like scantron machines in college tests. I'm fine with them.
That's what the NH machines are and how voting in NH works.
Voting in most states is different from precinct to precinct. The problems are being reported from precincts which use Diebold machines, as 80% apparently do. Do you have some other information which suggests otherwise?
I live in Kansas and unfortunately, my precinct does use Diebold systems and has since I moved here. I vote every election but never come out convinced my vote counted. Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
That thought did occur to me, but I would think the sheer terror they have of Clinton actually winning would trump that.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I suspect the GOP Secret Smearing Society doesn't actually have a whole lot more against Hilary than they do/would any other popular Democratic candidate, but they had the good fortune of having had 8 extra years of Hilary in the spotlight. Plus she's a woman, so a sizable part of the populace already vaguely (and sometimes not so vaguely) mistrusts her.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I was under the impression that if the machines were hacked, it would be by individuals and not by Diebold themselves.
And having McCain win would be the thing to have if you're going to make Hillary be the Democratic frontrunner, so that fits, but McCain still isn't nearly the frontrunner. Hillary against Huckabee or Giuliani is a much better race for Democrats. MUUCH better.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Well, the Clinton v Obama race was the only one close enough that a slight change due to fraud could change the winner. Clinton's win did knock down Obama quite a bit, in addition to it boosting Clinton's campaign quite a bit as compared with the results from Iowa.
If I were scheming to screw the democrats, I would much rather Clinton get the nomination than Obama. Up until the NH primary, it seemed plausible for Obama coming close to sweeping the primaries.
This is another good illustration of why the primary process is messed up. Clinton's margin of victory was about 7,500 votes, but that was enough to derail Obama's momentum, which could have lasted into super Tuesday. Now we have concerns about the margin of error for that election, and good reason to believe that it is at least dozens of votes. Even though the true margin of error is almost certainly not enough to change the outcome of the NH race, it could have ended up as a tie rather than a clear win for Clinton. The PR impact for Obama of a tie with Clinton would have been much smaller than a significant loss.
Posts: 145 | Registered: Apr 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I was under the impression that if the machines were hacked, it would be by individuals and not by Diebold themselves.
Could be, but in 2004, it was Diebold itself that was suspected.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I learn something new every day. I wasn't aware of that. The biggest threats I always hear are how easy those things are to hack in a jiffy by people actually in the voting booths.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Voting in most states is different from precinct to precinct. The problems are being reported from precincts which use Diebold machines, as 80% apparently do. Do you have some other information which suggests otherwise?
Did you read the article I linked? It addresses the issue of the Diebold machines used—my precinct is one that uses them. You mark your ballot on paper and then you feed it into a Diebold scanning machine... like a scantron.
There's a huge paper trail consisting of each vote.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
too bad no body recounts by hand these days.
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posted
Signed the petition and commented: "It is ridiculous that a medium which is well-known to be easily compromisable is the current mainstay for our method of electing officials to any office. There are constantly articles concerning the death of democracy in many nations which were formerly under Soviet rule, but perhaps the media should be concerned with the death of democracy in the United States. "
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
A paper trail ain't much use if no one counts the papers even after fishy results are reported.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote: DESI claims its systems provide strong immunity to ballot tampering and other vote rigging attempts. These claims have been challenged, notably by Bev Harris on her website, Blackboxvoting.org, and book by the same name. Harris claims there is also evidence that the Diebold systems have been exploited to tamper with American elections — a claim Harris expands in her book Black Box Voting. DESI has also come under fire for the recent discovery that the Diebold voting machines do not and did not in 2004 meet the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) error standard.[citation needed]
The controversy regarding electronic voting machines is related to a larger debate concerning the relative merits of open source and proprietary security products. Advocates of the open source model say that systems are more secure when anyone can view the underlying software code, identify bugs and make peer-reviewed changes. Advocates of proprietary systems claim that so-called black box systems are more secure because potential weaknesses are hidden.
Avi Rubin, Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Technical Director of the Information Security Institute has analyzed the source code used in these voting machines and reports "this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts."[11] Following the publication of this paper, the State of Maryland hired Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to perform another analysis of the Diebold voting machines. SAIC concluded “[t]he system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise.”[12]
The company RABA did a security analysis of the Diebold AccuVote in January 2004 confirming many of the problems found by Avi Rubin and finding some new vulnerabilities.[13]
In June 2005, the Tallahassee Democrat reported that when given access to Diebold vote-counting computers, Bev Harris—a critic of Diebold's voting machines—was able to make 65,000 votes disappear simply by changing the memory card that stores voting results for one that had been altered. Although the machines are supposed to record changes to data stored in the system, they showed no record of tampering after the memory cards were swapped. In response, a spokesperson for the Department of State said that, "Information on a blog site is not viable or credible."[14]
In early 2006 the Diebold Election Systems subsidiary came under considerable fire from alternate media sources for creating voting systems without reasonable auditing, no paper trail, security holes, and software bugs. The attention negatively affected Diebold stock (though elections are only a small part of their business) and triggered investigations in several states after insiders revealed irregular practices in Diebold's election division. Diebold was the first major vendor to experience a serious backlash from poor quality, service and preparation in the election industry, and condemnation of Diebold helped to focus attention on other vendors (ES&S). According to Avi Rubin, the Johns Hopkins University computer science professor who first identified flaws in the technology in 2003, the machines are "much, much easier to attack than anything we've previously said... On a scale of one to 10, if the problems we found before were a six, this is a 10. It's a totally different ballgame." According to Rubin, the system is intentionally designed so that anyone with access can update the machine software, without a pass code or other security protocol. Diebold officials said that although any problem can be avoided by keeping a close watch on the machines, they are developing a fix. [15] Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is a proponent of electronic voting and the examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania, stated "It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system." Douglas W. Jones, a professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, stated "This is the barn door being wide open, while people were arguing over the lock on the front door." Diebold spokesman David Bear decried the seriousness of the situation, asserting that "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software. I don't believe these evil elections people exist."[16]
On July 31, 2006 the Open Voting Foundation released a press release which explains, with photographs, how to open the case with a screwdriver and alter the boot configuration of the Diebold TS so as to boot from EPROM, on-board flash memory or external flash memory. The implication is that a previously tested and certified machine could be booted using an unauthorized boot profile, and that such a boot profile could be activated with relatively little technical expertise. [17]
On October 30, 2006 researchers from the University of Connecticut demonstrated new vulnerabilities in Diebold AccuVote-OS optical scan voting terminal. The system can be compromised even if its removable memory card is sealed in place.[18]
On November 2, 2006, HBO premiered a documentary entitled "Hacking Democracy", concerning the vulnerability of electronic voting machines (primarily Diebold) to hacking and inaccurate vote totals. The company attempted to block the documentary prior to its broadcast, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
On January of 2007, a photo of the key used to open Diebold voting machines was posted in the company's website. Hackers and just about anyone with a knack for lockpicking were then able to produce their own duplicate key based on the photo. The key unlocks a compartment which contains a removable memory card, leaving the machine vulnerable to tampering. [19]
A report commissioned by Ohio’s top elections official on December 15, 2007 has found that all five voting systems used in Ohio (made by Elections Systems and Software; Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold; and Hart InterCivic) have critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election.[20]
posted
Oh man. Because we the public have been such pushovers for the last seven years, Diebold has finally rewarded our public ineptitude at managing our own democratic interests.
Behold: electronic voting is the perfect tool for stealth oligarchy.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I think that it is very hard in our society to believe our voice makes a difference. I received tons of letters from my senator saying "Thank you for your opinion on this vote. I am voting the other way." Voting against her doesn't matter (for a while I thought the reason to vote was so I could proudly say "I have voted against every single person in office right now."). I think that our current system (with election districts designed for no close races) makes people feel powerless and therefore apathetic.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
I suppose I could burn my vote by picketing the voting place. I'm just a republican in Maryland after all. My husband is unaffiliated, though. Does anyone know where to find out whether Maryland's primary is semi-open? I've looked around our state website.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Kucinich calls for NH recount and his campaign is putting up the money to do it. I mostly doubt the recount will find anything significant enough to change the results, but I'm glad the recount will be done either way.
quote:Originally posted by scholar: I think that it is very hard in our society to believe our voice makes a difference. I received tons of letters from my senator saying "Thank you for your opinion on this vote. I am voting the other way." Voting against her doesn't matter (for a while I thought the reason to vote was so I could proudly say "I have voted against every single person in office right now."). I think that our current system (with election districts designed for no close races) makes people feel powerless and therefore apathetic.
I get tons of letters (emails) from my senators and representative saying, "Thank you for your opinion on this, I co-sponsored the bill you are asking me to support, so we're all good!" In other words, "Yes, Kate, we know. We're on it."
quote:Originally posted by Enigmatic: Kucinich calls for NH recount and his campaign is putting up the money to do it. I mostly doubt the recount will find anything significant enough to change the results, but I'm glad the recount will be done either way.
--Enigmatic
I'm glad they are doing a recount. I'm also happy to see that New Hampshire has this backup in place. I wish my state would do that. I think we could all learn from NH -- the votes were questioned and they have a system to respond to that questioning. Many states do not have any paper trail and must accept the computer-generated results as fact.
And that's the real problem here. Rumors of voter fraud in NH aside, there have been serious allegations of problems with these voting machines and virtually no response to those allegations.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Interesting. About 500,000 votes to recount across a couple dozen cities. I'd actually think it wouldn't take a ridiculous amount of time.
I gotta say it's funny that Kucinich of all people is footing the bill, when the people who really have the most to gain are Obama and Paul, near as I can tell.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
recounts are generally politically tedius arent they not and can potentionally harms one campaign? If anything Kucinich is perfect as he probably knows he probly can't win and so can stick his neck out to make sure the political process is fair and not make the others look like their whinning.
posted
Recounting 500thousand votes could be done by a couple hundred counter&watcher pairs within a workday. An estimate of "weeks" just means that NewHampshire officials are extremely reluctant to finish the recount before the next set of primaries and caucuses, including TsunamiTuesday. An answer of "weeks" is more appropriate as an estimate of the time needed for a small handful of hacks to fill in a bunch of new ballots to replace some real ballots before turning them over to counters&watchers.
Kucinich has the least to lose from charges of "paranoia"; especially if the recount totally confirms the election day results. Which it will probably do, or come very close to doing. Nonetheless, whatever you may think of his policy stances, he does have the utmost respect for the processes of democracy. So when some voters start speculating about whether there is something fishy about the difference between pre-vote&exit polls and the election results, between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots, it's hardly surprising that Kucinich is willing to take the heat for their benefit.
Paul has little to gain from a recount beyond greater airing of his views. When LePen got into a two-man runoff for the French presidency with Chirac, LePen found out that he had maxed out on the vote count when there were multiple candidates in the primary. Despite the fact that most of the French voting for Chirac had to pinch their noses. Similarly, most of Paul's policy positions are so out of sync with those of the overwhelming majority of Americans that he's maxed out, or close to.
However the person with the most to lose is Giuliani. A shift in his vote count downward or a shift in Paul's count upward (or a small shift in the appropriate directions of both) will have Giuliani finishing after Paul. Giuliani's already deferred payment of campaign staff salaries until after TsunamiTuesday on February5th because of a cash crunch. A loss to Paul will dry up new campaign contributions to an even smaller amount, and make more of his volunteers look for a stronger candidate. Lack of money for sufficient advertising would make a poor showing on TsunamiTuesday even more likely. Without major victories on TsunamiTuesday, Giuliani is effectively out of the race. A loss to Paul might even get Giuliani disinvited to future debates while ensuring that Paul will have a place behind the podiums.
Though less hurtful, McCain also has more than a bit to lose. The bump from an overwhelming NewHampshire victory has certainly helped his campaign, both in volunteers and contributions.....and in the polls. His campaign bus has turned into a private Boeing737. A smaller lead over Romney will boister Romney campaign supporters, as well as Huckabee's.
I'd suspect that most Thompson's financial "supporters" are backing him in hopes that his "good ol' southern boy" celebrity facade will draw votes away from Huckabee, and not because they hope that he wins the Republican nomination.
Considering the vote differential on the Democratic side, the most that Obama can hope for is a photofinish win (though unlikely). Which wouldn't help him that much. The media raised public expectations for him to win by more than a whisker. Or hurt Clinton that much: she was supposed to lose by more than a hair.
quote:31 can be human error. At best he might get one more delegate and his reputation could get soiled. Huckabee might get more. On the hand count comparison Paul was down 2% and Huckabee was down like 2.33% (not exact numbers).
I am a Paul supporter and I don't know there was fraud--at least wide spread fraud.
What Paul said:
quote: ...
Without a firm belief that vote fraud had taken place, and without the possibility that a recount would have increased the chances for success of our campaign, a recount would have diverted campaign resources, time, and energy away from crucial battles elsewhere.
...
The numbers our caucus watchers reported agreed with the official tally, and both results also aligned with the campaign’s internal polling. In relatively pro-Paul counties, our sampling pegged support at 11.5%. This is consistent with an overall 10% finish for the entire state.
In New Hampshire, while I would have hoped for a better result than eight percent, I am convinced that vote fraud played no role in this result. Rumors of vote fraud were investigated, and in the end they proved to be the result of errors in early media reports that were not reflected in the official numbers.
...
Many have expressed concerns that those ballots counted by machine yielded a 2% lower total than those counted by hand. However, machine counted vote totals were more than 2% lower for both John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Hand counted votes were more likely to be cast in rural areas. Results almost always vary between urban and rural areas.
My campaign staff and I have analyzed the numbers in New Hampshire and I have reached the conclusion that it was the high turnout -- not vote fraud or counting errors -- that left us with eight percent of the vote. Our total vote count of over 18,000 votes was well within what we projected given the efforts of our extensive statewide get-out-the-vote program, giving me no reason to believe that vote fraud played any role in the results of the Granite State’s primary.
In both Iowa and New Hampshire there is much to be proud of. Taking both states together, I am honored that over 30,000 people cast their vote for me -- more than either Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson. Unlike many other candidates’ efforts, our campaign for freedom is growing and our message is spreading.
This should put the "Alex Jones and Ron Paul share the same belief" narrative to rest. Ron Paul doesn't believe 9/11 was an inside job, and we can trust him on that. Ron Paul doesn't believe the election is being stolen, despite Jone's repeated insistence that Paul play the victim.
Paul is a class act and I hope his ideas on being fiscally conservative and desire to promote change through trade instead of war "re"-finds a home in the republican party.
posted
Maybe he's not electable, but I think Paul's done some permanent good for the population of eligible and/or once-apathetic voters. He's really made the Republican party look like a bunch of clowns jumping on a bandwagon in these debates. I think there's some hope that an increasing number of people won't just settle for the status quo after this year.
Posts: 349 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
pooka: I believe Maryland's election is closed. I'm from Maryland as well, though I'm living in Illinois now.
Ron Paul is the first politician I have ever given money to(just $30).
I know he'll never win, and I don't agree with some of his views to be sure, but we always need a voice of dissent, and Paul is dissenting in generally the right direction, in my opinion. We need to shake down the power structure of our society as often as possible.
The stances of the mainstream candidates do not differ except in ways that distract from what's important. Then there's the personality worship that the candidates try to make as important as possible to voters. They all support the current power structure of our country.
Whether or not it's Ron Paul, I don't care. The role he's filling is necessary, though.
Posts: 106 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
I've never been in a district with electronic voting machines. As a computer scientist, though, I hope I never have to vote that way.
They corrupt human readability and physicality constraints on tampering. Data about voting disappears from human readability when entered and voting is finished, if there's no paper trail. There's no evidence that your vote exists, from the human sensory point of view. Likewise, data can not only be corrupted, but automatically, in milliseconds.
In a situation where human trust is paramount, electronic recording of votes alone will never be enough.
Posts: 106 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Originally posted by scholar: I think that it is very hard in our society to believe our voice makes a difference. I received tons of letters from my senator saying "Thank you for your opinion on this vote. I am voting the other way." Voting against her doesn't matter (for a while I thought the reason to vote was so I could proudly say "I have voted against every single person in office right now."). I think that our current system (with election districts designed for no close races) makes people feel powerless and therefore apathetic.
I get tons of letters (emails) from my senators and representative saying, "Thank you for your opinion on this, I co-sponsored the bill you are asking me to support, so we're all good!" In other words, "Yes, Kate, we know. We're on it."
I love my district.
I wrote to Schakowski once asking her to vote against something, and she wrote back thanking me for my support and assuring me that she was definitely voting for it. I guess whoever was in charge of the form letters misread mine.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I don't know if everyone has forgotten about this, but The NH recount did not find much discrepancy.
So does everyone feel much better now?
Though I was listening to a talk show yesterday and I guess they were Thompson fans, calling in to say McCain is being set up as a fall guy because the powers that be have decided "it's Hillary's turn." I'm glad I'm not that nuts.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
they only counted some 40 percent of the votes so far.
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posted
I'm confused on how there would be any discrepancy at all. 27 votes went to Clinton that should have gone to Obama. How does that happen? How do we know that those were the only ones?
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
40% or ~115thousand represents the number of ballots that Kucinich has already paid for to be recounted, and not the number of ballots already recounted. A full recount will cost him another $43thousand.
They've only recounted "thousands of ballots" of ~287thousand cast on the Democratic side of the primary. From normal usage, the "thousands" means more than 2thousand but less than 20thousand. Otherwise they would have used "tens of thousands"
And "Percentage-wise, the changes...are so small that they all get rounded down to zero" means a maximum error rate of less than 0.5%, ie less than 1error per 200ballots. "Barack Obama gained 27 votes and Dennis Kucinich gained three, while Hillary Rodham Clinton lost 27 and John Edwards lost four" means that at most 61ballots were miscounted. 61errors within a maximum rate of 1error per 200ballots means that a minimum of 12,200 ballots have been counted. So my best guess is that between 13thousand and 20thousand ballots have been recounted thus far.
However, since the newspaper is going out of its way to obscure the actual number that have been recounted, "...they all get rounded down to zero" could be misleadingly used as meaning each individual candidate's change shows less than 1error per 200ballots when compared to the combined total vote recount. With the vote recounts for Obama and Clinton each having individual errors of 27ballots, the minimum number of ballots recounted thus far could be as little as 1 ballot more than 200times27ballots, or 5401ballots.
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