Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster ...

[whoever]

RS said:

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

Myself - I'm not so worried about hacking as I am about those darn "software glitches". You know - vote for one person and end up voting for another - perhaps as much as 20 times.

[maylily]

No way to hack? This is more than disturbing...

In a sworn affidavit (pdf file) Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

snip

According to his affidavit, Yang, his employer, later informed him that the software might be used to “control the vote in South Florida.” He says that he would never have developed the software had he known its alleged ultimate purpose.

and

An exhaustive investigation has turned up a link between current Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney, a customized Windows-based program to suppress Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a Florida computer services company with whom Feeney worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist while he was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and top level officials of the Bush administration.

[penguin who forgot password]

RS said:

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

[Penguin frustrated]

Guest-penguin said:

Oh, crap, never mind. This freaking thing erase my entire post.

[outgirl]

Guest-Penguin said:

Oh, crap, never mind. This freaking thing erase my entire post.

I hate it when that happens

[outgirl]

maylily said:

No way to hack? This is more than disturbing...

In a sworn affidavit (pdf file) Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

snip

According to his affidavit, Yang, his employer, later informed him that the software might be used to “control the vote in South Florida.” He says that he would never have developed the software had he known its alleged ultimate purpose.

and

An exhaustive investigation has turned up a link between current Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney, a customized Windows-based program to suppress Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a Florida computer services company with whom Feeney worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist while he was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and top level officials of the Bush administration.

maylily...that is very disturbing. I do not understand why this isn't a concern for all regardless of political affiliation

[RS Davis]

Guest-Penguin said:

Oh, crap, never mind. This freaking thing erase my entire post.

Do you need me to reset your password for you?

- Rick

[whatever]

Still an issue

www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050805D.shtml
Citizens in the Rain
By Robert C. Koehler
Tribune Media Services

Sunday 08 May 2005

Maybe we can't have election reform without media reform.

"Where there is a free press the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed." - Lord Macaulay (one of many stirring quotes on the sacred role of the Fourth Estate adorning the lobby of the Chicago Tribune)

My fantasy of the mainstream media actually doing their job, and living up to the words they carve in marble to describe their own importance, is an 80-point (Terri Schiavo- or even Pope John Paul II-sized) headline running across the top of tomorrow's paper: ELECTION RESULTS IN DOUBT.

That would stop a few hearts. But the nation's major newspapers, even as they struggle with declining readership, have no intention of being quite that relevant to their readers - no intention, it appears, even to begin the process of looking into the hornets' nest of vote fraud allegations abuzz in meticulously researched reports on electronic voting (see uscountvotes.org) or the voluminous Conyers Report on what happened in Ohio on Nov. 2 (see truthout.org/Conyersreport.pdf).

Isn't our democracy at stake? Doesn't that matter?

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