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Post by whatever on Nov 8, 2004 7:08:07 GMT -5
Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Report
Monday 08 November 2004 Everyone remembers Florida's 2000 election debacle, and all of the new terms it introduced to our political lexicon: Hanging chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, overvotes, undervotes, Sore Losermans, Jews for Buchanan and so forth. It took several weeks, battalions of lawyers and a questionable decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to show the nation and the world how messy democracy can be. By any standard, what happened in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election was a disaster. What happened during the Presidential election of 2004, in Florida, in Ohio, and in a number of other states as well, was worse. Some of the problems with this past Tuesday's election will sound all too familiar. Despite having four years to look into and deal with the problems that cropped up in Florida in 2000, the 'spoiled vote' chad issue reared its ugly head again. Investigative journalist Greg Palast, the man almost singularly responsible for exposing the more egregious examples of illegitimate deletions of voters from the rolls, described the continued problems in an article published just before the election, and again in an article published just after the election. Four years later, and none of the Florida problems were fixed. In fact, by all appearances, they spread from Florida to Ohio, New Mexico, Michigan and elsewhere. Worse, these problems only scratch the surface of what appears to have happened in Tuesday's election. The fix that was put in place to solve these problems - the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002 after the Florida debacle - appears to have gone a long way towards making things worse by orders of magnitude, for it was the Help America Vote Act which introduced paperless electronic touch-screen voting machines to millions of voters across the country. At first blush, it seems like a good idea. Forget the chads, the punch cards, the archaic booths like pianos standing on end with the handles and the curtains. This is the 21st century, so let's do it with computers. A simple screen presents straightforward choices, and you touch the spot on the screen to vote for your candidate. Your vote is recorded by the machine, and then sent via modem to a central computer which tallies the votes. Simple, right? Not quite.  [/url] A few examples: * In Broward County, Florida, election workers were shocked to discover that their shiny new machines were counting backwards. "Tallies should go up as more votes are counted," according to this report. "That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone down. Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward." * In Franklin County, Ohio, electronic voting machines gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in one precinct alone. "Franklin County's unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B," according to this report. "Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said Bush received 365 votes there. The other 13 voters who cast ballots either voted for other candidates or did not vote for president." * In Craven County, North Carolina, a software error on the electronic voting machines awarded Bush 11,283 extra votes. "The Elections Systems and Software equipment," according to this report, "had downloaded voting information from nine of the county's 26 precincts and as the absentee ballots were added, the precinct totals were added a second time. An override, like those occurring when one attempts to save a computer file that already exists, is supposed to prevent double counting, but did not function correctly." * In Carteret County, North Carolina, "More than 4,500 votes may be lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes. Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost." * In LaPorte County, Indiana, a Democratic stronghold, the electronic voting machines decided that each precinct only had 300 voters. "At about 7 p.m. Tuesday," according to this report, "it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters." * In Sarpy County, Nebraska, the electronic touch screen machines got generous. "As many as 10,000 extra votes," according to this report, "have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals. Johnny Boykin lost his bid to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat in the race was 127 votes. Boykin says, 'When I went in to work the next day and saw that 3,342 people had shown up to vote in our ward, I thought something's not right.' He's right. There are not even 3,000 people registered to vote in his ward. For some reason, some votes were counted twice."[/ul] |
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Post by outgirl on Nov 8, 2004 8:55:53 GMT -5
These electronic voting machines are very scarey to me. They can be hacked. Paper seems safer. There is too much at stake in our election for too many around the world. Besides the fact that the diebold guy was stating he'd give Bush a win. The exit polls are fucked. Or else the voting machings are. The exit polls were much further off in states with electronic voting. Something ain't right. Of course we get called poor losers for bringing this up. It shouldn't be partisan. We should all demand that our elections be as free of fraud and error as possible.
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Post by whatever on Nov 8, 2004 9:16:53 GMT -5
These electronic voting machines are very scarey to me. They can be hacked. Paper seems safer. There is too much at stake in our election for too many around the world. Besides the fact that the diebold guy was stating he'd give Bush a win. The exit polls are fucked. Or else the voting machings are. The exit polls were much further off in states with electronic voting. Something ain't right. Of course we get called poor losers for bringing this up. It shouldn't be partisan. We should all demand that our elections be as free of fraud and error as possible. Yeah, my folks seem to think the election results were a combination of rigged voting AND redneck voters. But I know even in Jeff country, Kerry didn't loose by much, it was much closer to being split than any kind of landslide. I've suspected the results of this election since it reported. Whoever said to me, about this while I've been mulling it over...he said, you know, so far when you've suspsected something, it's turned out to be true. Ha. So, well see. That would also explain that radical tarot card reading. Have to throw a little metaphysical stuff into the mix, don't you think? haha A rigged election would definitely explain that layout. My ma couldn't remember ever having that combination turn up either. Covering card "The Tower" and crossing card "The Devil". Now Whoever thought I had perhaps gotten what I was expecting; EVIL Bush. But at that point, I genuinely expected Kerry to win, all indications on media and communications were that he would win. I was completely taken aback when that turned up. So, I wasn't affecting the cards that way. Hmmm |
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Post by outgirl on Nov 9, 2004 8:50:59 GMT -5
I know what you mean. I am so tired of being right about these guys. They did everything that I thought they would in the first 4 yrs. Deficit through the fuckin roof, war, fucked the environment in a big way and even I didn't predict the FMA. I was hoping he would be more gay friendly, and still think he would have been had he not been pandering the the RR for votes. I think he's such a phoney that I even think his faith is phoney. It has always just seemed a role to me. But who knows. We'll see what he does to us next. Judicial appointments seem to be the scariest thing for gays. Cheney and Halliburton are the greatest threat to the rest of the world IMO. Hopefully we'll survive. I heard they have asked Dean to be chairman of DNC. That would be a great move. If anyone can immobilize a group of people, we know he can. I was sort of hoping he'd run in 2008. I hope Hillary doesn't. I like her but this country isn't ready for her.
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Post by whatever on Nov 9, 2004 9:31:27 GMT -5
I know what you mean. I am so tired of being right about these guys. They did everything that I thought they would in the first 4 yrs. Deficit through the fuckin roof, war, fucked the environment in a big way and even I didn't predict the FMA. I was hoping he would be more gay friendly, and still think he would have been had he not been pandering the the RR for votes. I think he's such a phoney that I even think his faith is phoney. It has always just seemed a role to me. But who knows. We'll see what he does to us next. Judicial appointments seem to be the scariest thing for gays. Cheney and Halliburton are the greatest threat to the rest of the world IMO. Hopefully we'll survive. I heard they have asked Dean to be chairman of DNC. That would be a great move. If anyone can immobilize a group of people, we know he can. I was sort of hoping he'd run in 2008. I hope Hillary doesn't. I like her but this country isn't ready for her. Yeah. Sigh. As far as his religion, shoot he didn't even find it until he was 40. I'm not impressed. After getting married and having children and working in big business with big money...I think he was a little slow on his grasp of spirituality in life. Man was a drunk. Man got caught. Heck, in the military, that's a black mark on your record forever. I've know folks that got so harrassed with mandatory classes and punative measures they got out of the service. This clown became president. Twice. It wasn't as if he came from a family of heathen white trailer trash - which I didn't but I lived right next to. But he came from a wealthy family, and it seems to me he lived a life of excess. I don't know how anyone can trust him, given this war, plus his record plus his personality/mannerisms which lie constantly, and what I at least perceive as not being very bright, yet bright enough to use false down-to-earth speech. Pissing off all our allies. Going to war against the advice of EVERYBODY...not just a few nations...EVERYBODY...and this awful man even convinced the country that it didn't mean anything if they all thought it was a mistake. Or that we could be making mistakes now. And now...now the fucker has a "mandate"? I can only it serves as being enough rope... |
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Post by RS Davis on Nov 9, 2004 22:14:50 GMT -5
Interesting article - and I agree with OG - I am more comfortable with the punch card ballots.
By the way, excellent layout on the original post, Whatever.
- Rick
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Post by outgirl on Nov 10, 2004 4:32:21 GMT -5
Interesting article - and I agree with OG - I am more comfortable with the punch card ballots. By the way, excellent layout on the original post, Whatever. - Rick You know I love it when you agree with me  |
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Post by whatever on Nov 10, 2004 8:22:06 GMT -5
Interesting article - and I agree with OG - I am more comfortable with the punch card ballots. By the way, excellent layout on the original post, Whatever. - Rick Thanks dude |
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Post by RS Davis on Nov 10, 2004 13:48:08 GMT -5
You know I love it when you agree with me It's because I'm so smart... <what happened to my winking guy??> - Rick |
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Post by trippy on Nov 11, 2004 11:01:03 GMT -5
I don't really understand this fear of the computerized voting machine. Well, I guess I understand it when the ceo of Diebold says he's gonna rig an election, but I don't see how paper is any safer than computerized. This call for a "paper trail" confounds me a bit. IF the computer is unsafe and hacked, why on earth would anyone trust the paper trail it generates? So what would be the point?
Sure computers can be "hacked". Buildings can also be broken into and paper ballots can be stolen and replaced with others. Or simply burned. or whatever. Both have security risks, they are just different.
There is a laten luddite-ian fear in many people about the notion of computerized voting. Its new, its magical technology, so its feared. Its no safer or no less safe than paper ballot voting. Heck one only need to look at Florida in 2000 to see the difficulties with paper.
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Post by RS Davis on Nov 11, 2004 16:20:09 GMT -5
I don't really understand this fear of the computerized voting machine. Well, I guess I understand it when the ceo of Diebold says he's gonna rig an election, but I don't see how paper is any safer than computerized. This call for a "paper trail" confounds me a bit. IF the computer is unsafe and hacked, why on earth would anyone trust the paper trail it generates? So what would be the point? Sure computers can be "hacked". Buildings can also be broken into and paper ballots can be stolen and replaced with others. Or simply burned. or whatever. Both have security risks, they are just different. There is a laten luddite-ian fear in many people about the notion of computerized voting. Its new, its magical technology, so its feared. Its no safer or no less safe than paper ballot voting. Heck one only need to look at Florida in 2000 to see the difficulties with paper. I'm certainly no luddite, and I heard some things that made me feel better about the machines. They are stand alone, as is the server. There is no way to get into it from the outside. The votes are saved on disk and hard copy. They sneakernet the disk to the main server, and it does the tally. - Rick |
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Post by outgirl on Nov 12, 2004 3:05:27 GMT -5
I'm certainly no luddite, and I heard some things that made me feel better about the machines. They are stand alone, as is the server. There is no way to get into it from the outside. The votes are saved on disk and hard copy. They sneakernet the disk to the main server, and it does the tally. - Rick Please say that again and pretend I don't know a fucking thing about computers ...whats a sneakernet? |
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Post by RS Davis on Nov 12, 2004 12:03:51 GMT -5
Please say that again and pretend I don't know a fucking thing about computers ...whats a sneakernet? Sneakernet is just computer nerd comedy for actually saving something to a disk and physically walking to the computer you want it on and loading it. What I was basically saying is that there is no internet or modem access to any of the voting machines or the giant computer that tallies them, so it would be ver hard to hack. - Rick |
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Post by outgirl on Nov 16, 2004 3:39:32 GMT -5
Sneakernet is just computer nerd comedy for actually saving something to a disk and physically walking to the computer you want it on and loading it. What I was basically saying is that there is no internet or modem access to any of the voting machines or the giant computer that tallies them, so it would be ver hard to hack. - Rick Oh but I had heard something about them being able to be hacked. Maybe I was stoned. |
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Post by RS Davis on Nov 16, 2004 4:32:25 GMT -5
Oh but I had heard something about them being able to be hacked. Maybe I was stoned. Maybe there's another way. Truthfully, I heard this from an official representative who wants you to think it is secure. Not exactly unbiased. - Rick |
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