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2004 Election Weirdness Continues 2013
I've read dozens of submissions about election anomalies in the last week and they show no sign of slowing so I've decided to post a few of the main ones here to let you all discuss them. The first is the Common Dreams report
that shows that
optically scanned votes have a strange anomoly in florida: the Touchscreen counties roughly matched up to party registration numbers, but optically scanned paper ballot counties showed strangeness like one county where 69.3% registered democrat, but only 28% of them voted for Kerry.
Palm Beach County, Florida logged 88,000 more votes than there were voters;
that machines in LaPorte, Indiana discounted 50,000 voters;
in Columbus, Ohio voting machines gave Bush an extra 4,000 votes;
in Broward County, Florida voting machines were counting backwards;
Lastly,
precincts in New Mexico gave provisional ballots that will never be counted to as many as 10% of all their voters.
Liars (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Liars (Score:5, Funny)
A third of them, duh. You obviously don't know religion!
Re:Liars (Score:4, Interesting)
states, not individuals (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Liars (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Liars (Score:5, Interesting)
Which decisions would that be?
Dude, you have some strange interests if Bush has them in mind. You are not doing an intern in Halburtan by any chance?
Re:Liars (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Liars (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can see your position is indefensable under your own logic. If it's murder then you have no right to murder innocent person X just because guilty person Y commited a crime against you.
-
Re:Liars (Score:5, Funny)
Be honest here. This entire post was just an excuse to use that one word.
Settle down, now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Liars (Score:5, Informative)
Of course not. The idea that giving rich people more money would help our economy is ludicrous and always has been.
Rich people are rich because they make more money than they spend. That's it. Poor people spend all their money. That's why they are poor.
Giving rich people more money is just going to make them richer.
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone really say, with a straight face, that they were satisfied with the two choices the system provided us with? Was there a good reason that the race was Bush v. Kerry instead of McCain V. Dean other than the bullshit notion of primaries? It disgusts me to no end that petty political difference can so blind the public that they forget that hedonistic political parties exist to serve themselves above all else.
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2000, there were 110M jobs and 281M people, so a rough estimate is that you need (on average) one job to support 2.6 people. We've probably gained about 10,000,000 people since Bush started in 2000, which means that about 3.8M jobs needed to be created during his administration, just to keep pace with population growth. Even if there are the same number of jobs as when he took office, he's nearly four million jobs in the hole.
Nor is it just a matter of liberal arts majors not being able to find work. The total job numbers hide the number of underemployed, who are working fewer hours than they would like or working in jobs that don't utilize their skills and training.
During the eight years of the Clinton administration, total jobs increased by about 22M, more than two jobs for every three people added to the population. Historically, the fastest job growth has always occurred when Democrats were in the White House.
Re:Liars (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose you're the same person who thinks the estate tax (now so eagerly termed the death tax by Bush and his corporate hacks) should be removed? The estate tax basically taxes rich people when they die, thus not allowing all the riches from one generation to flow to another. You think that kid who just inherited daddy's fortune deserved it? You think he worked hard for it? Not likely. And now all that inherited income comes to him tax-free. Imagine if you just inherited 10 million dollars. If you had won a lottery, you'd get maybe 6 million after taxes. If your dad had 10 million, now you'd keep the whole lot, tax free.
This 'work hard' crap is a bunch of drivel. It in fact reminds me of the rich Lebowski. It's easy to get up on a high horse when you probably grew up in an upper middle class environment. Yes, there are plenty of slackers out there. But it goes both ways. I'd say probably about 90%-95% of the country fits into a slacker attitude. Not that they don't work, but that they don't work hard regularly. They don't plan in advance, they don't spend 60 hrs at the office every week for that next promotion, they fit into the attitude of regular joe. There are rich slackers and poor slackers. My guess is the rich slackers still make more than the poor slackers. But you give the poor slackers grief for living off the fruits of other peoples' labors. They probably lived in much worse living conditions. They probably never had someone to mentor them, they probably had a single parent who was never around. They grew up in bad schools and had bad teachers and bad influences on all ends. Environment has a lot to do with how one turns out.
I'm also going to guess you're a guy, who probably has no clue what it would be like to be a woman and try to raise a baby kid and go to school at the same time. Hard work? Try nigh impossible. The women who manage to do this, on their own, probably still won't manage to get a great job out of college because they have no connections, and even if they do, their child would suffer.
So don't give me any of this black and white bullshit. It's a grey world.
Re:Liars (Score:5, Informative)
No-one ever said there was a connection between the two despite what Michael Moore would have you believe.
As for 9/11 being the cause of the Iraq war, I won't deny that.
WTF? There's no connection but I'm right anyway? I don't care who claimed what if what I say is the truth. Besides, This [whitehouse.gov] is an example of the kind of crap that was coming out of the administration during the run-up to the war. You're right that nobody ever made an explicit connection, but they sure implied it as often as possible. And it worked, too, with almost half the country believing that Saddam Hussein was in some way responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
This article [csmonitor.com] sums it up nicely.
Unfortunately we didn't know the intel was bad until after
You should have. After all, Condi Rice dropped the ball on the Bin laden memo. Seems like a clear indication that something was rotten in Denmark.
Saddam was sending conflicting signals.
The only conflicting signals I was hearing were between Hans Blix and the Administration. I've also never understood the whole WMD rationale. Even if Saddam had what intel said he had, shouldn't Pyonyang be a smoking crater now too? I mean, if you're going to infringe other countries' version of the 2nd amendment, why not start with the big boys and work your way down?
He had violated the terms of the cease-fire of the first Gulf War and numerous U.N. resolutions.
Jesus, not that old chestnut again. Israel's broken more resolutions than everyone else combined and they haven't had so much as a slap on the wrist.
See, shit like this, not being consistent, is what makes this President the world's laughingstock. I find it highly ironic that he's seen as a "steady" leader by his electorate.
I've never read a Tom Clancy novel, though I do admit I enjoyed the Clancy movies with Harrison Ford.
Lucky you. His early stuff was good, but then he disappeared up his own arse. Oh and Harrison Ford is not Jack Ryan. Damn you Alec Baldwin for being so greedy!
Where was I? Oh yes...
But what is so sick about what I said?
Anybody who espouses an honest-to-god "better them than me" attitude will always get my contempt. Like I said, we don't live in caves, we've evolved. Maybe your ideas should too.
It's called hitting them at home while they're on the other side of the world rather than waiting for them to come here. Completely logical and strategically sound.
Those that call things like Iraq "pre-emptive war" are not being entirely honest. It's a proactive response to terrorism. We don't wait for them to attack us, we take the fight to them. And based on the amount of insurgents/terrorists in Iraq it looks like we hit the bullseye.
Thanks, this actually mad me laugh out loud. You do realize that the terrorists are there because we're there, right? If Bush had really wanted to hit the Bullseye, he would have hit Saudi and finsihed the job in Afghanistan before moving on to Iraq. Please tell me you don't honestly believe what you just wrote, you sound like a smart guy.
I'd be interested in what you were in the minority on and were later proved right on?
I dunno...I correctly predicted, a year ago, that Bush would win re-election and by a healthy-but-short-of-a-landslide margin.
Actually, I have to admit being wrong on one thing. I am highly surprised that no WMD's were found in Iraq, if for no other reason that they had been planted there by the US. Gotta say I didn't see that one coming.
Re:for those who'd like to read the quotation: (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting note, Burrough uncle is credited with inventing modern P.R. for the Standard Oil Company after a massacre of workers. I tired to argue in a paper that Burroughs was attempting to create ways to deprogram people as a reaction to his Uncle's invention.
Just guessing.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just guessing.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The process is more important than the result (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if it changes the results or not. We need a fair and open examination of all of the issues, regardless of any sort of party nonsense. The way to insure trust in a process is to audit the hell out of it. Track down every error, even if it's only pennies, account for every discrepancy, and make the whole process completely open to public scrutiny.
We owe it to ourselves, and to each other; we owe it to the candidates and their supporters who may be being slandered and (if any of them are actually guilty) we owe it to any cheaters to shine some light on their accomplishments as well.
If we plan to export freedom and justice against entrenched politics and religious biases around the world, we'd better make them our priorities at home as well.
-- MarkusQ
Re:Just guessing.... (Score:5, Informative)
Random noise? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Random noise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Random noise? (Score:5, Funny)
We're talking about counting ballots. These are macroscopic measurements, and any actual physicist (not a pretend one, like you) should understand that there's no problem at all in measuring things accurately unless they're really tiny and moving really fast. Either you're a liar or the most incompetent physicist ever.
I bet if you got pulled over for speeding you'd try to convince the cop that there's no way he could possibly accurately measure your speed and at the same time know what road you were driving on.
Re:Random noise? (Score:5, Funny)
Gotta love union jobs...
Re:Random noise? (Score:5, Insightful)
The optical scanner anomalies in Florida are potentially hugely significant.
The anomalies in New Mexico could easily flip the state in to the Kerry column so they are statistically significant though they can't change the outcome of the election without Ohio or Florida.
The key point is if there is election rigging or incompetence its ALWAYS significant. If you don't report it, investigate it and punish it your opening the floodgates to everyone to do it in every election and your elections turn in to dodo.
YES, Look here for a detailed analysis (Score:5, Informative)
vvnm.org/resources/florida2004/florida_vote_patter ns.htm
Yes the patterns show a strong significance. it screams at you.
The conclusion is not what you are expecting though.
1) First Bush Won Florida On optical scan machines, kerry won on e-voting
2) e-voting agreed with the exit polls, optical scan did not
3) The key finding of the above article is that people vote DIFFERENTLY on optical scan and e-Voting.
THIS LAST FACTOR IS HUGELY IMPORTANT!!!! Assuming No hanky panky is involoved this may be due to the human-machine interface--a factor that has gone unexplored.
Who will be the first (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who will be the first (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear, hear.
I'm not an American, I read the article summary and saw nothing partisan in it whatsoever. Then I came to read the comments - full of "Bush won!", "Not statistically enough to turn the election!" and similar pearls of wisdom.
What is being criticised is not this specific election, nor the victory of a particular candidate. It is the process itself under scrutiny here, and that is an entirely valid line of study.
Cheers,
Ian
you know the voting system is flawed when... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:you know the voting system is flawed when... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll also give the requirements for perpetrating a fraud such as you're proposing and making it statistically significant:
1) You would have to have many individuals involved in the fraud because voting twice in the same precinct would be too dangerous - a person could easily be recognized as voting multiple times and possibly arrested.
2) Once you have the people, you now have to have access to multiple registered identities, one per precinct per person involved in the fraud.
2a) You need to be certain that those multiple registered identities aren't going to vote, either by registering nonexistant people or somehow figuring out who is not going to show up.
3) Now, you have to have each person travel to every precinct to be defrauded and vote.
3a) Absentee ballots could simplify this process but given how few elections have turned on these ballots over the years it hardly seems credible that this could be done without detection.
Bottom line? Your "undoubtable fact" is very much in doubt and would be difficult to perpetrate under ideal circumstances. Far easier (though I've gotta think still difficult) would be coopting election officials themselves and taking that more direct route to fixing an election.
Simple question (Score:4, Interesting)
If not, the only concern should be to correct the problems and not to overturn the election right?
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. CNN says Bush had 52% of Florida vs Kerry's 47% (3,911,825 vs 3,534,609, a difference of 377,216 votes). The "strange anomoly" the article points to shows e-touch precints voting favoring Kerry more than expected (expected is total vote * %party) by 4,422 votes (out of 3,863,840 total). And the op-scan precints favored Bush more than expected by 599,721 votes (out of 3,419,852 total).
If the op-scan votes had favored Bush over expectations as much as the e-touch had favored Kerry over expectations, Kerry would have won Florida, and he would have won the national election.
I didn't run the numbers on any of the other anomalies.
Something new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Saw this earlier (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it's interesting, but that's not a useful study, just a dump of a bunch of numbers. There has been at least one serious documented instance of major electronic voting machine failure/fraud in Ohio (the precinct that counted 4,000 too many Bush votes), but this isn't even an analysis let alone proof of anything in Florida.
They list number of registered Republicans and Democrats, but don't show how those same countries voted in the last Presidential election, and more importantly, they don't show any exit poll results.
Exit polls, bitching aside, are probably the most important way we have of validating actual voter result numbers county-by-county and precinct-by-precinct. The best way to flag fraud is to note when the exit polls are substantially out of line with actual returns, and particularly if they are out of line in a systematic (and unpredicted) way.
Beyond that, I have several questions about these numbers shown.
While I have every reason to distrust Diebold given their atrocious history of faulty machines and rabid partisanship, it's hard to believe that a conspiracy of three vendors, all of whom sold optical scan machines to different precincts, worked together to create this fraud.
Furthermore, the most rural counties seem to be the ones that had the most radically Republican results, despite Democratic voter registrations. This just seems to be in pattern with the rest of the South - the thing about Florida as any long time resident will tell you is that southern Florida, and its urban parts in general are culturally much closer to the Northeast, while the rest of Florida is culturally much closer to the South (the accents follow the same pattern too - they speak with a Southern drawl in a lot of the rest of the state).
And registered Democrats voting Republican in a Presidential election en masse is not news to the South.
So to demonstrate anything meaningful - show me the exit poll numbers side by side, and then let's see if there is any consistent and suspicious looking discrepancy not explained by the major cultural divides within Florida, or the extensive attention paid by Republicans to the I4 corridor area in their campaigning.
Re:Saw this earlier (Score:5, Informative)
Ask and ye shall recieve. [bluelemur.com]
Re:Saw this earlier (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Saw this earlier (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like these?
Wisconsin
Bush had 4% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 223 elections
Pennnsylvannia
Bush had 5% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 1838 elections
Ohio
Bush had 4% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 223 elections
Florida
Bush had 7% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 500,000 elections
Minnesota
Bush had 7% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 500,000 elections
New Hampshire
Bush had 15% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 10^22 elections
North Carolina
Bush had 9% over the exit polls
Probability: 1 out of 500,000,000 elections
Reference [scoop.co.nz], probabilities calculated with SD=1.53 for 95% certainty level at +-3%.
This is more than cause for alarm, it's a wake-up call that the voice of the people was overwritten by fraud in this election. Contact your local media, contact your congressmen, tell your friends and family, and force people to pay attention to this.
Re:Saw this earlier (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, this site [democratic...ground.com] has a graph of exit polls among various states (scroll almost all the way to the bottom) compared to the overall results. They are grouped into the paper ballot states and the non paper ballot states. You can see the obvious differences between these two groups.
Now that said, I don't know where these numbers came from or how trustable this site is. But you asked for the numbers, so here they are.
Re:Saw this earlier (Score:5, Interesting)
+ 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
+ The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Land
How not to write voting software (Score:5, Funny)
Rule #1: Do not use signed shorts to count the total number of votes.
Re:How not to write voting software (Score:5, Funny)
They didn't. They just used "int num_votes" on the modern Windows 3.x platform.
Don't forget this... (Score:4, Funny)
Democrats (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with issues such as these, especially with the Diebold machines is such that the person who CHOSE them should be sacked (IE the Democratic County Clerks).
I am sorry, but I don't feel sorry for anyone. NO, I didn't vote for BUSH either. Both are losers.
Next time, vote LIBERTARIAN (or some other third party) and have your votes count less.
Black Box Voting (Score:5, Insightful)
Please watch this free 30-minute film [votergate.tv] about black box voting machines.
We have all been scared about Diebold and other black box voting [wikipedia.org] machines, and for good reason [cnn.com]. Apparently one of the central machines from Election Systems & Software Inc. tallied 115 votes for Bush in a certain county, while another machine tallied 365 votes for that same county. Which one was right? There is no way to tell, because "it is too hard" to add a printer to a counting machine. It is not like they have been doing that for 30 [wikipedia.org] years [wikipedia.org]. But who needs to do a recount when the machines are infallible, right?
Most infuriating of all is that Republican Senator Hagel, the former Senate Ethics Director, resigned after admitting that he owned Election Systems & Software [scoop.co.nz]! That's right, the same voting machine maker that 60% of ALL VOTES in the U.S. are counted on, the same one that provably miscounted votes in Ohio and other states, and the same one that refuses to print receipts to recount these votes. No wonder legislation [wikipedia.org] trying to require printers on voting machines is taking so long to get through congress when congressmen can vote themselves into office without a paper trail.
Re:Black Box Voting (Score:5, Funny)
Tinfoil hats (Score:5, Funny)
Sufficient condition for election fairness (Score:5, Insightful)
All count mistakes benefit Bush? None for Kerry? (Score:5, Insightful)
16 bit number? (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody PLEASE tell me that that has nothing to do with 32,000 being close to the maximum value of a signed 16-bit number.
Who writes this software?
Open letter to Republicans. (Score:5, Interesting)
Florida vote distribution (Score:5, Informative)
The remainder has been pretty well covered by other
In the very article referenced [washingtondispatch.com] by commandantTaco [cmdrtaco.net] one reads (if on is able) "...Palm Beach County appears to have accounted for the discrepancy..."
I guess the article from Aa href="http://www.michigancityin.com/articles/2004
Reading the Broward County article [palmbeachpost.com] we learn, "Bad numbers showed up only in running tallies through the day, not the final one."
The bit [ansiblegroup.org] from NM doesn't reflect much weirdness. Obviously all those folks that were too ignorant to check their paper MUST have been Bush supporters.
Magnitude of this issue.. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the touchscreen counties, there were roughly 29% more Republicans voting than expected and 26% more Democrats than expected
In the optical scan counties, there were roughly 46% more Republicans than expected and
Read the common dreams report on that one - it's pretty thorough. This, along with the unprecedented inaccuracy of the exit polls should make everyone suspicious. Don't let them get away with it just because your side won.
All I have to say is that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Election Outcome Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
What matters is that some voting machines have been deployed with no paper trail, which makes detecting either glitches or outright fraud impossible other than by guessing based on exit polls.
With paper ballots that are scanned by machine (like Wake County, NC's [wakegov.com]), at least it is possible to conduct a manual recount after the fact, to check up on the machine / software. Some places actually do an automatic manual recount on some small percentage of (randomly selected) precincts for this purpose.
Also, people need to have confidence in the integrity of the elections process (which these efforts help provide), or else our government has no legitimacy.
Any examples of errors in Kerry's favor? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, to ease my state of mind over this, can someone point to significant errors in Kerry's favor? Surely if these are random and unrelated occurances, the distribution of who is being favored should be about equal, right?
Simply amazing.... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. You receive a letter telling where you can vote
2. You go to the voting-site with that letter.
3. The officials check the letter and your ID. They then remove you from their list of voters and hand you the ballot. The ballot looks like this [iijokiseutu.fi]
4. You walk in to the booth, and write down the number of your candidate on the ballot.
5. You close the ballot so your vote is not visible, and the officials stamp the ballot.
6. You then drop the stamped ballot in to the ballot-box.
7. The ballots are counted manually with observers making sure everything is A-OK. The final results are available few our after the polling-sites close.
8. Results are decided by a direct popular vote. Then one getting the most votes wins. In presidental elections, if no candidate receives more than half of the vote, we will have a second round between the two candidates that got the most votes in the first round.
Related to voting: It's strictly forbidden to campaign right outside the voting-site. I was pretty shocked to see how in USA the people waiting in line to vote were handed pre-filled ballots with campaigners showing them "how they should vote".
really, this is not rocket-science!
Re:Oh for the love of Pete (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe Bush won fairly (even though I despise his policies), but I also believe we need to work on getting the most accurate vote count possible, and that's only possible when we admit there are flaws. Geesh.
Re:Oh for the love of Pete (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh for the love of Pete (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
All anonmilies should be investigated, even the ones that don't have a chance of changing the outcome.
If cheating is going on, then it should be stopped. No exceptions.
Even if it's just stupidity and not malice, it should be stopped.
-- should you believe authority without question?
Re:Oh for the love of Pete (Score:4, Insightful)
My Vote Counts (Score:5, Insightful)
I only get one vote. Just like everyone else. I absolutely need to know that my one vote counts and has been counted. It is that simple. There is no just concept where "most" votes count.
I am floored at the number of /. apologists with regard to this topic. The software development community should be outraged that systems that are fundamentally supposed to do ADDITION are not doing so in a reliable, secure manner. If we can't secure ADDITION, then what can we secure?! There are people in my professional community that should be profoundly ashamed at the results of their incompetence.
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:5, Interesting)
John Kerry's name is mentioned nowhere in the article. Its just about the quirks of the voting system, which should by and large be fixed. Stop being so defensive, not everything centers around Bush stealing an election.
I agree with you (Score:5, Insightful)
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
It's comments like that that put people on the defensive, when we should be simply working to ensure ways to make the machines, systems, and processes more reliable, and that a voter-verified paper trail exists.
Though, someone raised a valid concern in a previous slashdot story: if we have so little faith in our ability to oversee, manage, and use e-voting systems, what's to stop any number of groups from demanding paper recounts in almost every jurisdiction, every time. Yes, our democracy is *that important*; I'm not saying it isn't. But this is a double-edged sword: many people have alleged that poorer communities have always gotten the shaft from old, poorly working, or broken election equipment; HAVA aims to ensure that consistent voting systems that meet a certain standard are available to ALL voters - and, naturally, we chose to go down the electronic path. We trust computers with just about everything under the sun: our power, our health, our lives, our money - and we've developed reliable systems for many tasks. Why can't the same be accomplished with e-voting? Sure, if Diebold itself was counting the votes on a single central computer under their control with no audit trail, I could understand the concern. But these are literally thousands of independent, non-network-connected systems in thousands of jurisdictions, monitored by people who have been charged with monitoring our elections forever.
So, what's fundamentally different now? And yes, I'm fully aware what not having a permanent audit trail means. We should have that. But that's not what I'm asking.
Re:I agree with you (Score:5, Insightful)
If we have no faith in the method, then the method should be scraped.
If a small percentage has no faith in the fairness of the method, then we should be looking for a better method.
When one side loses, they should be thinking "it's a fair cop" not "I wonder if the election was tampered with."
The question of election tampering shouldn't even be entering into their minds.
It should be so unlikely and difficult that even a well organized political organization is incapable of it.
A few simply things go a long way toward that goal;
A vote summary, printed on a card and dropped into an audit box at the polls.
When the polls close, print a summary at each polling station and drop it in the audit box, post it conspicuously in addition to modeming/email or hand delivering it to the main counting station.
-- should you believe authority without question?
Here, I'll explain (Score:5, Insightful)
The referendum in Venezuela happened a few months before the US eletion, and it was also the first widespread use of electronic voting in that country, so it makes for a good comparison. (Wikipedia background on the referendum here [wikipedia.org], think of it just like an election).
The Venezuelan voting process used thumbprints for verification of voters, had heavy international monitors, used voting machines which source code was open and reviewed by thousands of programmers months before the election, and had no less than three paper trails (one which was given to the Carter center, one given to the election board, the other kept for verification purposes). The process of the electronic voting machines was highly scrutinized and available on the web for months for review by anyone interested (in fact, the website is still up right here on the company's website [smartmatic.com]). Diebold did none of this. The source code was not presented for review. The process was highly unknown and obscure. There were no paper trails.
In the end, Chavez won by 18 percentage points, verified by both the voting comission as well as by the Carter center. The process was standardized and each ballot looked the same and each voter was given the same experience. Exit polls matched, roughly, the actual results. If there had been even HALF the problems in Venezuela that the US has seen, the opposition in Venezeula would NEVER have accepted the results. They would have demanded another election. If 4000 votes were put for Chavez that didnt really exist, the opposition would go crazy. And thats with an EIGHTEEN PERCENTAGE POINT win.
Bush, on the other hand, won by 2 percentage points. TWO percentage points. There were no paper trails. The voting process was NOT standardized. The exit polls did NOT match the final results. Then all these problems arise. And you say "well, he still won by more votes than those which got messed up."
The point is that the voting should be perfect. Why can venezuela do it and the US cant? EASY-- because the venezuelan opposition puts pressure and refuses to accept the results ANY OTHER WAY. Its not that anyone refutes that George Bush got more votes. However, just because it doesnt matter in THIS election doesnt mean it shouldnt be heavily scrutinized and fixed before next election.
Remember, in an election you have to fix things before its a problem. Or else you get a President elected who didnt really win the election (a la Bush in 2000)
Re:Here, I'll explain (Score:5, Insightful)
The time to fix e-voting is BEFORE it fouls an election. If you wait until afterward, you won't have the proof that it happened. The election must not be hinged upon trusting a single entity's claim that it won't cheat when counting. That's a basic obvious fact every country except the US seems to understand. Why are we being so stupid?
Re:Here, I'll explain (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong because:
There is no reason an anonymous voting process should fail to certify voter validity. Voters themselves are NOT anonymous; rather what they vote is... Yes, that's not perfect: this means for instance you could "maliciously" influence elections by discouraging some people to vote and helping others. Not only is this accepted in the countries I'm familiar with; that's actually pretty publicly practiced (at least they way I see it).
Misleadingly off-topic because:
You suggest that organizing an election is so difficult it's not realistic to expect any better. Even though I don't doubt that organizing an election to everyone's satisfaction is no mean feat; it certainly is possible: Not just does Venezuela succeed; most European countries succeed perfectly fine too, and although I'm unfamiliar with an example, I'm willing to bet some others do to...
There is no real difficulty in requiring voting machines to have public, verifiable blueprints. There is a lot of hassle, but no technical problem in standardizing the voting process - If the Supreme Court rules against a recount on the grounds of the notion of equal treatment of voters, doesn't it seems ridiculous that the first count isn't even remotely equal?
You misunderstand the use of a democracy:
Frankly, I think you're looking at democracy and elections entirely too religiously... Democracy pretty much fails as a type of government...
- Elections don't guarantee any sort of optimum government.
- They don't require the elected government to in any way actually do what they said they will do.
- They don't require any sort of competency whatsoever.
- People actually making the choice aren't actually competent to make that choice. You don't hire people based on the gut feeling of the guy next door, do you?
- Elections are really expensive. Just think about that lost productivity, etc., in addition to the obvious costs of the process itself.
- Elections are very coarse grained. You might choose an idiotic president just to get a good staff and party, or the other way around.
It's probably not realistic to expect any perfect government, so I'm not advocating anything else, but let's not over hype some sort of American dream democracy concept beyond what it's worth.
There is one thing that elections actually do really well (*hint* when done the Venezuelan way), and that's providing a trustworthy, verifiable, hard-to-tamper with means of distributing power. As a side bonus this "government" thing is actually supposed to do good things for "we the people"
Just to clarify... the grandparent post about the Venezuelan election really was all about TRANSPARENCY, and ensuing benefits, and in comparison to other similar elections the American presidential elections are systematically a failure.
In conclusion:
Secret ballots don't guarantee the anonymity of the voters, but ensure a ballot's owner's identity remains secret; AMERICAN ELECTIONS COULD WORK BETTER; Democracy isn't perfect, it's transparent.
Re:Can't be that (Score:5, Insightful)
Show of hands. Who knows what an op-scan ballot is?
We use these in Loudoun County, Virginia and I can't imagine a reason for not doing it this way. There's nothing mechanical like all these goofy punch card systems... state-of-the-art 1890's technology, with their byzantine layouts. The ballots are incredibly simple and clear, so there's confusion down in the old folks' home where someone mixed up the medications.
And unless you have some kind of seizure while wielding the pen, there's no chance of ambiguity. But it doesn't reap millions of dollars to a company for forcing expensive, buggy, hopelessly complex solutions, where simple tried and true technology serves effectively, so I guess it's just not a feasible solution.
In addition to being prone to ridiculous errors, there is also the possibility of fraud, although I don't believe most of these can be attributed to some widespread conspiracy to cheat. As I've always said "Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence." and to that I would add, "The government will never choose a simple, cheap and effective solution when it is in competition with a complex, expensive and flawed solution."
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe this. The electronic voting issues have been issues since well before this election however, and I'm not about to stop inquiring into the many documented problems just because I accept that Bush won this one any way you slice it.
As for why it takes a while for this stuff to start coming out, a lot of the detailed numbers and vote counts aren't released until at least a week or two after the election occurs. So it's not possible to find these serious errors on day 1.
I think a lot of this stuff is being overstated, like the Florida "inconsistencies", which don't seem so unreasonable to me when you correct for geography, cultural makeup, campaign time and other issues. And as you point out, the idea of 3 separate, _competing_ companies collaborating together to defraud the Florida electorate is pretty much completely laughable.
However, the 4000 Bush votes that mysteriously appeared in an Ohio precinct with less than 1000 registred voters is a proven and acknowledged issue - that's why this story was carried by CNN, not just some crazy blogger. And other legitimate issues will crop up, I'm certain of it. Whether anything will indicate provable, large-scale fraud, I am very doubtful, but more evidence is surely forthcoming that indicates the inherent weaknesses of many of the black box electronic voting systems that have been put in place over the last few years.
Competing? (Score:5, Informative)
There is plenty of evidence for potential conflict of interest [serendipity.li] in voting machine companies....
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
The big point you don't seem to get is that without an audit trail these machines are totally unaccountable. NO MATTER HOW MUCH MONEY YOU HAVE, so yes, even the "300M Kerry campaign" wouldn't be able to find out what really happened. This is the whole fucking point. So, please, pull your head out of your ass. You can't say with *ANY* certainty that Bush actually won.
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of who won, and regardless if it was intentional or not, it is essential to investigate the problems, if only to prevent them from happening again. If it is determined that the errors are significant and widespread, then the elections must be redone. Those are the breaks.
We can discuss possible fraud once we know what the problem is.
Oh, and unless Diebold manufactured scantron-style counters and are responsible for printing provisional ballots with no addresses, I think your little rant is just slightly misplaced.
=Smidge=
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
College professors and other academics can point out the irregularities in the system all they want, they don't have the power to actually change anything (what are they going to do? Vote those jokers out? Ha!)
At this point I havn't seen anything like a smoking gun (don't expect to either), but I also have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that appeared right when it became obvious that yet again the exit polls (the primary measure of voting fraud in foreign countries) were skewed yet again this year (even with different people in charge!). Either 5% of the population have started systematically lying to exit pollsters (refusal rates havn't changed significantly), or there is something else odd happening.
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.duke.edu/~mth6/florida2000.xls [duke.edu]
I bet that if you took the time to look at 96, 92, etc, you'd see the same trend. For some reason a bunch of voters in those precincts register as Democrats, but always vote for Republicans.
Re:There are stringent requirements for the system (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you don't think that adminitrative pressure to roll these machines out wasn't responsible for a lot of the problems we see with them then you're deluding yourself.
Diebold is spinning like a top to counter this kind of publicity. It's possible that this represents a legitimate change of heart there, but I really doubt it. I'll take thier past actions and thier documented behaviors under a lot more consideration than last minute claims made in the middle of a hail of bad publicity.
Re:Big fucking suprise (Score:5, Funny)
I hereby revoke your membership in the tinfoil hat club. The correct phrasing is I don't trust government.
Your statement implies there is/was/will be a government you trust. That thought is just plain scary.
-Charles
Re:Big fucking suprise (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I was going to trust a government that was run solely by me, but that was because I paid myself off...little do I know I'm double crossing myself, and won't really support myself when it comes time to vote.
Re:Big fucking suprise (Score:5, Funny)
Liar, you don't have the power. There's only one member of the Tinfoil Hat Club who holds the power to revoke membership, and he/she would never reveal himself to Them by actually using it.
Re:False Alarm (Score:5, Informative)
In particular, tmoertel published a pretty good statistical smackdown on the theory of electronic irregularities in Ohio (this isn't my analysis - so I don't take credit for it):
==========
Thanks for sharing the data. Looking at it, I don't see any indications of Republican foul play. My analysis follows.
First, I loaded your data into R from The R Project for Statistical Computing [r-project.org]:
Re:False Alarm (Score:5, Informative)
Electronic voting, while a neat idea to speed up the vote counting process, seems to have run into a number of glitches [infoworld.com] (over 1100 nationwide) this November 2nd. In addition to seemingly random problems in Florida [1 [palmbeachpost.com], 2 [bradenton.com]], Ohio [1 [dispatch.com]], and North Carolina [1 [cjad.com]], there are allegations [bluelemur.com] of systematic fraud [commondreams.org] based on statistical comparison of exit polls to final results [stolenelection2004.com] in precincts with audit trails and those without. It is also interesting that in Florida, the voting patterns do not match the voter registration patterns as they do nationwide [rubberbug.com]. This has attracted the attention of numerous civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has filed at least two lawsuits [eff.org] since election day, and BlackboxVoting.org that has filed a Freedom of Information Act [blackboxvoting.org] request to obtain computer logs and documents from 3000 counties and districts across the US. Equally disturbing is the fact that CNN has (since Nov 2) changed its exit polling results [democratic...ground.com] to reflect the actual results. This has attracted the attention of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida who have jointly requested that the GAO immediately investigate the efficacy of e-voting machines [wired.com].
In case you are thinking that this is just sour grapes from Democrats who lost the election, think again. BlackboxVoting.org [blackboxvoting.org] has been investigating e-voting fraud for years. Likewise, the CEO of Diebold, one of the e-voting machine manufacturers has been quoted [cbsnews.com] as saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." And if that's not conflict of interest enough for you, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (now resigned) is an owner [scoop.co.nz] of the largest e-voting machine company ES&S.
Other numerous problems have been found with the machines from nearly every company in the past [1 [wired.com], 2 [washingtonpost.com], 3 [ejfi.org]]. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been investigating such machines on his own and has found a number of security issues [avirubin.com]. Swarthmore students stood up to Diebold [scoop.co.nz] in November of 2003 after discovering
Re:False Alarm (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, Ohio didn't use electronic voting in most of the state, the one where the 4000 Bush votes happened being more an exception than a rule. So searching for electronic irregularities is for the most part stupid. Someone challenged paperless electronic voting in Ohio and won so most counties dropped it and used their old system, usually punch cards. A few pressed ahead with half assed paper trails that may or may not have conformed to the judges ruling and were hastily done.
You don't need electronic voting to rig elections. They've been rigged as long as people have been voting. Paperless electronic voting just makes it really easy to do in a big way and really hard to catch.
If anyone rigged Ohio they could have done it the old fashioned way. Send poor quality punch cards to Democratic districts so you get hanging chads, or somewhere along the way punch out a chad for Bush in some cards so if the voter votes for Kerry its thrown out. Punch card "spoilage" is a time proven method for rigging an election.
Just because there wasn't a big statistical swing in Ohio doesn't mean the election wasn't rigged. In fact if you are really good at rigging a state you won last time the perfect rigging is to make it come out the same as last time or actually give your opponent a few more votes. Then someone comes along and does what this guy did and says, "No swing, no rigging" and that is not what it means. Its possible Kerry swung a couple percent to his side, thanks to the fact Ohio's economy has cratered under Bush. If you rig the election and just erase that two percent swing you have done a perfect job of rigging.
Again the exit polls suggest there was a swing to Kerry in most of the swing states that disappeared in the actual results, while the exit polls were pretty accurate in most of the non swing states. All the exit polls were biased to Kerry which is distinctly odd. Either they should have been off in all states in Kerry's favor suggesting a model problem or they should have been randomly off in both Kerry and Bush's favor. Just being off in swing states and only in Kerry's favor is odd to put it mildly.
Re:False Alarm (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure as hell do know why we went in to Iraq. We went in to it because Saddam had WMD's, and was going to use them on American cities, which is the reason I gave in first post, and which is what Bush/Cheney/Fox told us over and over again, and they never lie. It just happens there weren't any. We also went in because Saddam had ties to Al Qaida and was part of the 9/11 conspiracy. Why do I know this because Dick Cheney told me so, on Meet the Press, that it had been proven Iraqi intelligence met with the 9/11 ringleader in Prague. Unfortunately it appears it hasn't been proven and it probably didn't even happen and Saddam probably had nothing to do with 9/11. Reason three way down on the list was to bring freedom and democracy to the ragheads at the point of gun because God told George that this is what he put him on Earth and made him President to do.
Your the only one bringing up the oil angle here. I just have to go with the three reasons my President told me because he would never lie.
You probably haven't noticed but there are way more insane right wing talk show hosts, especially on radio, than there are liberal ones. I don't listen to any of them on either side, excepting Charlie Rose on PBS and I'm pretty sure he isn't insane. If anyone is insane its the right wing talk show hosts that are STILL ranting about the Clintons and seem to hate pretty much everyone and everything excepting their own. Liberal talk show hosts suck because they suck at hate filled, venomous rhetoric like its practiced by the wicked witch of the right, Ann Coulter.
Re:False Alarm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:False Alarm (Score:5, Insightful)
It is time to take the manufacture of voting devices and the auditing process out of the hands of partisans. And to all of you out there saying, "Boo hoo, Kerry lost. Get over it." How is it that Democracy in America is being hijacked, and you don't seem to give a shit? I'd wager you are the true anti-Americans. You do a lot of name calling, but when the shit hits the fan you show your true natures. Sunshine Patriots. Educate yourselves, and stand up for the Constitution you so loudly claim to believe in. Stop being little automatons.
VIVE LA REVOLUTION! (Score:5, Funny)
The Republican dogs will be the first with their backs agains the wall, now that the revolution is he-
Er, what was that? This is normal? Er, sorry. *blush* Disregard that last bit about the 'Revolution' and all. I blame the author of the article. They know how touchy we
False False Alarm (Score:5, Informative)
Don't confuse replicable (will produce the same outcome every time given the same inputs) and verifiable. To be verifiable you need something to verify against. The current breed of voting machines are, by definition, not verifiable. As has been repeated here ad nauseum, it is not even possible for the individual voter to verify that the choice the machine logged is the choice they made. In fact, there is ample proof (not speculation) that the voter's choice is not always accurately represented in eVoting machines.
If these machines offered a signficant advantage (cost, speed, reliability etc) over pencil & paper, I might be tempted to say that there is some justification for the risk but these machines are incredibly expensive, slow and unreliable compared to pencil & paper or scanner-assisted voting.
Re:False Alarm (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry by MS windows based touch screens storing data in MS Access is just not as good as a pen and a piece of paper and 10 scrutineers counting by hand. A kid in highschool could hack that.
Electronic voting of this nature is quite new and if there is even a possibility that there could have been this kind of fraud, it is prudent to investigate whether it will eventually change the outcome of this particular election or not.
You wouldn't trust your personal data or credit card information to a company that stored it on an ordinary Windows computer using Access, why would you trust your votes to the same?
If the the process is so open, what has happened with Blackboxvoting.orgs FOIA request? As a matter of fact, what happened the blackboxvoting.org today?
I suspect any investigation will likely show that Bush really did win. That's beside the point. Do you really want there to be a possibility in the future of someone using the techniques mentioned in the articles to alter election results?
Think of this as an ethical hacker informing a big company of an enormous hole in their firewall (or other devastating security violation). Don't attack the hacker, fix the fucking hole.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:False Alarm (Score:5, Insightful)
Go check this [ecotalk.org] to see where the sympathies of the voting machine companies lie. Any claims of non-partisanship on the part of the companies should be viewed with extreme skepticism.
the company in question makes about 1% of its profit from voting machines, is very transparent and publically traded. Hardly a good candidate for fruad
Best kind of candidate, if you think about it. How much money they make is a non-issue. I don't care how much they make - what I'm worried about is how they handle the election.
This type of question has been around for 200 years.
Sure. But now we can ask it loudly until someone actually answers the damn question! We have at our hands a tool to make sure it gets in front of as many faces as possible. So why not use it?
The more shrill you side gets the more offended, turned off, and disgusted the middle 20% of votes in the country get.
So, what? Just shut up and take it? In case you hadn't noticed, moderation doesn't go over with this administration. Bush was the one who said "You are either with us, or against us." So, I'm coming down on the side specifically against him and his fellow Republiban.
Re:False Alarm (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, really hard. (Score:5, Insightful)
You used '=' instead of '=='. If we assume that the constant BUSH is a non-zero value, then the test is always true, and all votes get counted for Bush. You've proven the point in spectacular fashion.
I mean fuck, if you can make a mistake like that in a simple one-liner, how many flaws do you think there are in a multi-KLoC system?
Re:But would it have mattered? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ENOUGH ALREADY (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't think anyone here would claim that Kerry lost the election because of these anomalies. Any ones that would think that probably wear tin foil hats. Anyone that thinks Kerry lost the election because of these and thinks posting about it on the internet will change anything is just plain ignorant.
However, we should be paying attention to this. These are not your common irregularities. This is a whole new system of casting your vote. I've seen statistics that 30% of the votes this election were cast electronically. When we have such a large percentage of participation with these things, don't you think it's time we looked at the problems of them? And when stories like these come out about malfunctions and obvious conflicts of interest, don't you think that we, citizens, should make sure they're fixed before the next election?
Personally, I've written several members of my state congress asking about possible bills for requirements of electronic voting machines, such as the all-so-important paper trail. What have you done?
Say that to Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell no i'm not listening. Bush started out by declaring that he had a "broad victory" and "a very clear mandate from the American people." A 2% margin of victory is neither of those.
Now it's being made clear that he still believes in enforcing his view of morality on the entire nation: Rove: Bush Serious About Gay Marriage Ban [yahoo.com]
He has no actual intent to unite the nation. He's just been saying it for the PR value. Rove probably thinks that if they just shout loudly enough that they have a clear mandate and they want to work with the Democrats that anyone who disagrees won't be believed.
Re:Before you ask, the 4000 votes don't change Ohi (Score:5, Interesting)
However, if just one such error occured in each of Ohio's counties (88) then Bush would have 350K extra votes.
Re:By Weirdness, Taco means (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't accept the fact that Kerry lost... by 3.5 million votes.
You're right, it's been really hard to get over the fact that the worst president ever was backed by that many people. I've been incredulous all week.
However, Bush didn't win by 3.5 million votes. He lost by about 130,000 votes. If 131,000 more people voted for Kerry in Ohio - he would be our new president-elect. It is for this reason that we should be examining the voting mechanics errors, the number of which are approaching that winning margin. We learned this rather clearly 4 years ago, I'm surprised that you haven't... let me guess, you probably also believe that WMDs were found in Iraq and Saddam was behind 9/11? [pipa.org]
Taco isn't saying that crackers were messing with the system. The story that I read from his headline was that the system is messed up enough as it is, and we aren't getting fair or accurate vote counts. We can't have a truly functioning democracy when so many people's votes aren't counted properly. I mean, how are we supposed to tell Afganistan and Iraq that we know how to run a country better than they do?
"It's not who votes that counts. It's who counts the votes." -- Joseph Stalin
Re:I lie.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand this attitude at all. Why would you lie to exit pollsters? Do you lie to your doctor when you go in for a checkup? Do you lie to the waiter about what you want to order in a restraunt?
Having accurate exit polls is to the advantage of everyone--everyone, that is, except people trying to rig an election. They are the only ones who benefit from trashing the exit polls. Are you trying to help them?
For that matter, why is it that we are expected to believe not only that lying is rampant, but that it is much, much more common for the sort of people who place high importance on "moral values" to lie? Remember, it's not as if a bunch of Kerry supporters are supposed to have lied and said they supported Bush, is it? It the conserviative, upright rural Bush supporters who think moral values are very important that are supposed to have lied en mass. Does that make sense?
-- MarkusQ
Ok then only democrats can fill the job (Score:5, Informative)
If you did not serve I presume then that you can't either serve in political office because you are not a citizen. Then almost only democrats can fill the job.
Democrats:
* Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
* David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
* Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
* Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
* Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
* Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
* John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.
* Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
* Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam.
* Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
* Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
* Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91. v * Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
* Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal. v * Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
* Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
* Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
* Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
* Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
* Chuck Robb: Vietnam
* Howell Heflin: Silver Star
* George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
* Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311. v * Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
* Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
* John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters. v * Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg. v
Republicans -- and these are the guys sending people to war:
* Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
* Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
* Tom Delay: did not serve.
* Roy Blunt: did not serve.
* Bill Frist: did not serve.
* Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
* Rick Santorum: did not serve.
* Trent Lott: did not serve.
* John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
* Jeb Bush: did not serve.
* Karl Rove: did not serve.
* Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
* Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
* Vin Weber: did not serve.
* Richard Perle: did not serve.
* Douglas Feith: did not serve.
* Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
* Richard Shelby: did not serve.
* Jon! Kyl: did not serve.
* Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
* Christopher Cox: did not serve. v * Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
* Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
* George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.
* Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
* B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
* Phil Gramm: did not serve.
* John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
* Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
* John M. McHugh: did not serve.
* JC Watts: did not serve.
* Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem," although continued in NFL for 8 years.
* Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
* Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
* George Pataki: did not serve.
* Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
* John Engler: d