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.
Random noise? (Score:4, Interesting)
Simple question (Score:4, Interesting)
If not, the only concern should be to correct the problems and not to overturn the election right?
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: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.
Counting backwards? (Score:3, Interesting)
Signed 16-bit short anyone?
I can understand using signed numbers here -- at least the error would be obvious -- assuming noone just absolute values away the sign thinking they're clever. But how memory-limited are these systems not to at least use 24-bit or better yet 32-bit ints here? Is it really that much of a space savings to warrant districts subdividing becase the companies can't afford a little more memory in these things?
Or, is there something else I'm missing here...
Re:Liars (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just guessing.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Liars (Score:0, Interesting)
I voted for Bush. I was able to reasonably come to the conclusion that he had my interests at heart. I don't give a flying fuck what Bush thinks about his God. All I know is that his policies work.
Get over it -- people with completely different backgrounds than what you try to pigeonhole republicans as are still able to conclude that the GOP has their interests in mind.
Re:Oh for the love of Pete (Score:3, Interesting)
i wonder... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Interesting)
I lie.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:you know the voting system is flawed when... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea, I don't get that. I had my driver's license and voter registration card in my hand and they just looked at the card to get the spelling of the name and address right and handed it back.
Me: "Don't you want to look at my driver's license to verify I am who I say I am?"
Blue-haired poll worker: "No, that's OK we don't need that".
I had to insist that she look up from her god damn book and check my license and verify the photo was me. I can't believe that in this day and age the number one requirement of voting isn't to bring along a valid state-issued photo ID and your voter registration card. Voting machine fuckups are nothing compared to the undoubtable fact that there is widespread outright fraud occuring with people voting multiple times under different identities.
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, just like Bush never said Iraq was connected to 9/11 but he and his staff constantly and consistently implied it.
Re:By Weirdness, Taco means (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a non-issue that Drudge invented, anyway. The machines hadn't been reset from the year previous; so someone reset them that morning as they were setting up which is why they check the things in the first place. Drudge reported this as "Machine reports extra votes!!!" and implied that it must have been a boon to Kerry, but there's no evidence that was the case.
Re:Liars (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To All American Liberal Democrats (Score:1, Interesting)
Weeks before this election, accounts were pouring in regarding strange miscounts in voting machines, mysterious non-profits springing up and shredding any democratic voter registration forms they claimed to be filing, and all sorts of ridiculous threats aimed at students and minorities to keep them from voting. In all my research, I have not found a single incident that favored Kerry in terms of skewing the votes. There were even police officers issuing tickets to people sporting Kerry bumper stickers. All of these incidents, in fact, were quite clearly designed to skew the election in favor of Republican candidates.
I don't care if Bush is the next incarnation of Jesus Christ himself. Regardless of which candidate you want running the country, we must have a fair election. Corrupting our most basic institution won't make America better, no matter who is doing it. So please, put down the "us versus them, you're one of them!" attitude and think about the implications of such a crime against our country. Divided we fall.
Based on the plentiful evidence, I won't make any "allegations". I'll quite clearly and certainly state for the record that the Bush administration perpetrated ELECTION FRAUD on the largest scale in history. Period.
Re:False Alarm (Score:3, Interesting)
Because a way of cheating the results could be follow the approx distribution of previous election + a random value adjusted to the levels of actual, registered voters.
Ok, this objection could not have statistical meaning, nor means that because after existed a "proof" that things were fair, before the cheat was done specifically with that proof as target. But as I said, have very little knowledge on this topics.
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: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.
Not proof, but an interesting thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at the polls and results where favorable mistakes happened for Kerry. Are they only in states with few electoral votes, or already assured of a Kerry win?
I mean, c'mon. All you need to ask yourself is one question.
What Would Karl Rove Do?
(Other than eat gay babies)
Re:False Alarm (Score:1, Interesting)
For the nTH time this is not a democracy.
It is a representive republic.
The founders said as many bad things about democracys as they did having a king.
Please try to get it straight. It is a big differance.
My bet is they don't think there is anything being hijacked. But the loosers usually tend to claim that something is rigged when they loose.
And more stable growen up people tend to take the attitude of you lost cope.
I'd wager you are the true anti-Americans.
Name calling
Re:Oh for the love of Pete (Score:4, Interesting)
And it's all because of the multiple choice ballot. People go in there and pick red or blue. So when someone with no real clue goes in, he does eenie-meenie-miney-moe, and chalks up another in the Kerry or Bush column. Pure noise. All the "get out the vote" drives just serve to amplify the noise. People who think they have to vote "the lesser of two evils" just amplify the noise. Not liking Bush is not the same as supporting Kerry. Polls seemed to show that most of Americans didn't like either of them.
So now I'm supposed to believe 52% of Americans want Bush as president? I don't. I believe he won, but his mandate isn't that strong. The fact that most ballots present you with two choices makes the result pure noise.
With a write-in ballot, like the country used to use, we would see some numbers that accurately reflect the american voters. When someone clueless goes in and doesn't take it seriously, he writes in "Pee Wee Herman", and we can easily identify it as noise, and ignore it.
Then we'd see some meaningful stats as the result of the election. We'd probably see GWB at 20%, Kerry at maybe 15%, and all of these third partie guys at 10% or lower. Bush still goes to the White House, but there's no "52% of America is behind him" falsities behind it. Those numbers are completely made up, but I'm sure thats how an election would look. That's how they look in every other democracy that doesn't buy into this two-party crap.
What I'm getting at is, it's not a two party system, but you combine the multiple choice ballot with rules to make it nigh-impossible for anyone else to get on the ballot, mix it up with the current debate formats - which are openly set up to exclude any third parties, and you have a recipe for meaningless bullshit joke of an election.
So who cares if the machines work or not. Flipping a fucking coin would just as adequately represent the will of the american people. Bush/Kerry/Clinton whatever. Many, if not most, are sick of the same old party lines and stump speeches.
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:2, Interesting)
Regardless of Kerry's concession to the public, Kerry could still be appointed president if large enough vote count errors are discovered and the electoral votes go to him.
So far the magnitude of the voting errors is rather alarming; it is also a bit "strange" that most, if not all, the errors are in favor of Bush. The huge asymmetry between the exit polls and alleged actual outcome is also puzzling.
One does not steal an election with a landslide, one steals it with a 3% margin that leaves people thinking "Wow! That was a close one.."
Nothing will come of this (Score:2, Interesting)
Whistleblowers: "Someone screwed with the election!"
American Public: "No way! This is America! Maybe it's like that in China but that could never happen here!"
Open letter to Republicans. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Black Box Voting (Score:4, Interesting)
Mark your ballot.
Election worker takes said ballot and scans it electronically, in front of you while you watch.
Election worker folds said ballot in 1/2 and hands you back said ballot.
You deposit said ballot in ballot box.
Done.
Paper ballots ALWAYS have precidence over electronic tabulation.
Not too hard at all.
Re:Saw this earlier (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:False Alarm (Score:3, Interesting)
The question was going on long before the fact, in case you hadn't noticed. Blackboxvoting.org was specifically set up to contest the media hype surrounding the infallibility of electronic voting.
These types of actions are reprehensible.
How exactly were they supposed to swoop in before the fact? The voting companies were working with unproven technology in a partisan atmosphere, and some even stated their intentions to do everything they could to give Bush the election. While it is not fair to claim that all the problems of this election were due to partisan chicanery, it is absolutely right to view the errors with a high degree of suspicion.
I can agree that Bush possibly won the election, but until certainty is established, it will only be a probability and I for one, will view it with a high degree of skepticism. Unfortunately, there is nothing that I can do about it except suffer through another four years.
Which I intend to do. Loudly. Obnoxiously, even. So in the immortal, family-friendly version of the words of Dick Cheney:
Go fsck yourself.
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.
Lack of voting standards (Score:3, Interesting)
How much of this bullshit is it going to take before the tinfoil hat crowd realizes that national standardization of simple things (voting procedures/equipment/laws) is a good thing?
Re:Here, I'll explain (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with you 100%. People may say "well even if the voting wasn't skewed he would have won" there should BE NO IF! I don't see why they can't get it right... I'm thinking why can't there be a central database in each state with a list of all of the registered SS#s. You could then allow people to vote from their computer if you wanted to. You'd just use a standard PC at the polls and have people click their votes. It would be hard to fraud since you'd have to know someone's SS# and district. Hell, you could lock SS#s to districts to prevent brute forcing votes through via scripting. I'm sure there's some security issues i'm missing, but even this idea seems more secure than what we've got right now. I do think this is probably the way voting is going, though. But hey, maybe I'm wrong. Let me know if you think so.
-matt
Re:Saw this earlier (Score:4, Interesting)
It's certainly troubling to me - I've heard many times that exit polls tend to favor Democrats by 2 or 3 percent because some people don't like to admit they voted Republican (a strange concept if you ask me - why would vote one way, then be ashamed of it 5 minutes later, and not willing to divulge that information, when exit polls serve as an absolutely vital check and balance to the integrity of our election process and one of our most useful tools in finding election fraud). But the radical differences would seem to suggest that somehow New Hampshire residents are far more prone to lying about who they voted for in an anonymous poll than are people of other states. That I find particularly hard to believe.
I think people are missing the point (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows culture (Score:3, Interesting)
And there is no really big fuzz about this fact, no cancelled contracts with the companies making that faulty machines. It is just accepted as normal things related to computers as blue screens. People had to vote in computers, was sold the idea that their vote is more accurate because "they are counted by computers" only to find that the malice or idiocy around those computers had make irrelevant the main thing that makes what is a democracy.
Could the final result of the election have been different? Who knows, the detected anomalies could be the tip of the iceberg or things could have been the same even if all things were perfect. But for getting unnacurate or "according to polls" results why not stop at the poll level and give the same weight as real votes? after all maybe the percent of error in poll estimates is lower than the one counting the votes with that technology.
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:4, Interesting)
The effect was notably more extreme in these areas this time around. This explaination is the City/Rural arguement, where the Dixiecrats tend to vote Dem in local elections, but vote Rep for national elections. This is disprovable because the Op-scan machines even show this skew in non-rural precincts.
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?
More votes in Florida than voters (Score:4, Interesting)
New: Florida is reporting more votes in the presidential election than it is reporting citizens that turned out to vote. Adding all the presidential race votes reported by the Florida Department of State here yields a total of 7,588,422 votes. The Florida Department of State reports here that voter turnout totalled only 7,350,900. That's a difference of 237,522. 3.1% of Florida's presidential votes were in excess of the number of voters in the election. 380,952 votes separate the President and John Kerry in Florida.
Ask Fox (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Saw this earlier (Score:4, Interesting)
Two of those three vendors, ES&S and Diebold Election Systems, were started by the Urosovich brothers, financed by members of the Ahmanson family. Howard F. Ahmanson Jr has heavily funded the anti-evolution movement and other right-wing causes that advance a fundamentalist Christian outlook. He has a long-time relationship with Christian Reconstructionism, an extreme faction of the Religious Right advocating a theocratic takeover of American democracy, placing the entire society under the "dominion" of "Christ the King."
Now, I don't know about you, but this situation is ripe for shady dealings.
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.
Re:Competing? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is still a big question about how much of this is explained by geography and cultural differences between parts of Florida, but I'm willing to admit that there is at least a possibility that this could indicate large scale biases intentionally inserted into some of the voting systems used in key swing states.
Re:How not to write voting software (Score:3, Interesting)
If I create the code tstSize.cpp:
and compile it using g++:
I get:
So, for the g++ compiler a signed short can hold a number as large as 2^(8*2-1)-1 = 32,767, whereas a signed int (or a long) can hold 2^(8*4-1)-1 = 2,147,483,647, and a signed long long can hold 2^(8*8-1)-1 = 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. Note: this is compiler-specific, not language-specfic.
One factor a lot of folks miss: tabulation (Score:3, Interesting)
So it doesn't really matter what voting machine is used. The tally is on a partisan machine.
Re:There are stringent requirements for the system (Score:3, Interesting)
How do these third parties check that the source code they audit is the code used to generate the binaries on the voting machines? When reviewing the software at binary level, how do they know the software doesn't simply work one way during all other days than election day, and otherwise on election day? Why are these independent, third-party reviews secret?
Transparency is extremely important. In a voting system, it's imperative. I can't understand why this is even a question.
I'm in Gahanna, OH and am proof of this. My fault! (Score:1, Interesting)
So why did I register Democrat this time? The reason was a no-brainer: All but one of the local Republicans were running uncontested in the primaries! And let's face it, Bush's nomination was a sure thing in the Republican primaries. The Democratic candidate wasn't yet determined. Because of this, there was no logical reason to register Republican this time around, at least here in Gahanna, Ohio.
I had a funny feeling my friends online would blame me for skewing the Democratic party's predictions. :)
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
Re:False Alarm (Score:2, Interesting)
And lest you come back with the "brainwashed minion" argument, let me tell you that these proud men are intelligent and informed. Remember, they have access to the same information you do. Being able to read is a prerequisite to admission to the military. They just happen to have a level of dedication and discipline and devotion to duty that few of your ilk have.
You have your choice. You can sit with your tin hat and think there is some great conspiracy to rob you of your predestined victory, or you can stop and really try to understand that the United States of America is greater by far than the low-life tricks that a very few of both sides of the spectrum try to hoist into the process.
Re:All count mistakes benefit Bush? None for Kerry (Score:3, Interesting)
RTFA, or just keep talking out your ass. In Palm Beach County there were apparently 88,000 more votes (more votes = already counted) than voters, when they were at 98% of precincts reporting. Now that they are at 100%, they revealed that most of those votes came from absentee ballots - the number of absentee ballots went up from about 49k to 141k or so. When that update happened, there were an additional 1543 votes counted in the presidential race (not for the incumbent, as you assumed). Of those 1543 new votes, about 600 were for Bush and 950 were for Kerry (simple subtraction between the old numbers and the new), which was the same ratio as the orginal 550k votes at just under 40% Bush, just over 60% Kerry.
Numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Denial? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, for something as important as the National Election, yes, I am.
This isn't a Slashdot poll. It isn't voting for your favorite M&M color. It isn't the MTV Music Awards. It is deciding who will preside over our country, and even more importantly, represent us to the rest of the world for the next four years.
There are currently processes in place in the government to get as close as possible to error-free code. Take a look at the code running the NASA shuttles [fastcompany.com] for an example.
When a person is elected to be our President, I want to know that we did everything we could to make it a fair and impartial fight (from the voting standpoint---campaigns are a very different issue). I don't want to hear about 50 thousand votes being lost or machines counting backwards.
Obviously electronic voting will be used, and I'm all for it. I just think we should turn it over to a group of NASA programmers, or programmers with the same mindset, procedures and policies in place, so we can rest easy, knowing we did all we could to make sure every one of our votes count.
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.
Why not Scantron "multiple choice" ballots? (Score:4, Interesting)
~ - Not to suggest that counting the votes by hand is perfectly adequate, but while the politicians are out to waste money, they might as well waste it well.
PS - an even simpler solution to tied results would of course be to get rid of the two party system and electoral voting crap and go with a parliamentary system like Canada's, but everyone knows they're a bunch of no-good commies.
Re:Magnitude of this issue.. (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone else pointed out, the areas in Fl which have the optical scans tended to be the more rural areas, which tended to vote Bush across the whole country.
Remember that just because somebody registers as a Democrat/Republican/etc. doesn't mean that they will vote that way. Here in SE Michigan, Monroe specifically, there was a large voting block known as the Regan Democrats, just because even though they were registered Dems. they voted overwhelmingly for Reagan. My in-laws are very strong conservatives, but registered democrat for a while, because then they could vote in the democrat primary. They wanted a say in who the opposition was going to be.
If you want to talk about exit-polls, My parents won't even tell me who they vote for, do you really think they are going to tell a stranger outside the polls. In their case it is a matter of principle, they say. I have been given a similar impression about other people in their generation. In other cases I can see where, in a high crime / gang area, one might not want to attract attention for voting the "wrong" way.
I have been called for a pre-election poll, and the questions were far from "who are you voting for?" They were more like, "How do you feel about the current policy to [something negative]?" "Kerry has suggested that he would do [something positive], do you agree with this?" and only after 10 or so of these rather leading questions did they get to "Who are you going to vote for?" The obvious point was to try to sway my final answer, not to get an honest response.
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Liars (Score:2, Interesting)
Contrary to popular belief, it is possible for us geeks to get laid
Re:False Alarm (Score:2, Interesting)
And here's a simple system to eliminate the possibility of fraud.
1. Create a national database. Oh wait, one exists...Social Security Numbers.
2. Make results of all votes available to everyone via the web. This will allow anyone to check and see if the vote that they cast was actually counted as they intended. This also allows for immediate scrutiny to verify the results.
3. Investigate all "anomolies". Don't leave anything to chance. In the real world there shouldn't be any anomolies with an election system. If there are then there is an obvious issue.
Re:you know the voting system is flawed when... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No kidding (Score:2, Interesting)
I have been reading today that there are Pharmacists in the US that refuse to prescribe the contraceptive pill to women. For any reason, including to help prevent ovarian cancer. How can Americans treat their women this way? How would you feel if your daughter fell pregnant at 17, because she couldn't get the contraceptive pill, is forced to have the baby, because abortions were illegal, is forced to drop out of school and stay at home to raise the child, because all the orphanages are closed due to lack of public funding and an oversupply of unwanted children up for adoption?
But I guess that would never happen to you or your family, that only happens to other people, right?
Re:Saw this earlier (Score:3, Interesting)
Voter intimidation. For example, I knew someone who was both a union member and an NRA member. He was worried that the union might take action against him if he voted against them (for the NRA endorsed Republican). May be tin foil hat stuff, but he believed it and it would have affected his vote and exit poll results. He would have voted Republican when he believed no one could see and told the pollster that he voted for the Democrat.
It is also worth noting that those graphs are very skimpy on data. For example, what happened in the *other* 41 states? Or were the discrepancies from the eVoting precincts or the paper precincts (in Florida, the discrepancies were all in the paper based precincts). Were these polls taken throughout the day? Or were these the 5PM results, before many Republicans had a chance to get off work and vote? How did the exit polls predict other voter characteristics?
For example, does the male/female ratio match? One set of exit poll data that was being discussed had 60% of voters as female. Women were more likely to vote for Kerry than men. Thus, that data was likely skewed.
Any exit poll that does not include "refused to answer" in the results is being dishonest. Again, if the "refused to answer" group is composed of different characteristics than the "answered questions" group (for example, if women are more likely to answer than men), then it is likely that the data is skewed. The refused to answer group has to be considered as an additional source of skew over and above lying and statistical error.
Okay, what if... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Simple question (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
This is the allegation! (Score:3, Interesting)
There will be more irregularities noticed. It's that way with software. And many of those irregularities won't be fixed for the next election, either (as proven by Diebold versions over time after bugs were known).
By the way no need to fix ALL an election to rig it. Just say 3% of machines. Or get all Diebold to turn a Kerry vote into a Bush vote 3% of the time. Swap a few memory cards at the point where they're in the hand of one individual per county.
Memory cards aren't all there when you ask them for recount, either. If you are in power you can get the FBI all over it or to ignore it completely, while if you're NOT in power it's better to concede so you don't look like a whiner in front of the people that don't understand software and engineering bugs or centuries of voting fraud VS countermesures.
What we needed is decades of a pilot program in a small number of counties to get the technology and process right. Not a widespread "32767 is enough for everybody" mess!!
And to top it off, I think Bush would still have gotten elected on paper because he's so incredibly good at manipulating emotions rather than intellect. Monkey see, monkey do!
I'm most definitively in favor of some hacker adding exactly 30000 votes to every third party loon on some machines and putting a sticker on the machine notifying everyone of how easy it was.
If Windows were so secure on a Diebold, I'd like to see that Windows on the shelves. It takes only 5 minutes for my 12 year old to disable any kind of password, filters, chat logging, or game-time-limiting software I made or bought. But at least one day he MAY BE PRESIDENT! (-;
Re:What is being alleged, here, exactly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately you shot yourself in the foot here.
"Folks, so many people are involved in elections at so many different levels that there is literally no way that any central entity could rig an election across an entire state."
Its a near certainty the Democrats rigged Illinois in 1960 and it gave Kennedy the Presidency. Case closed
You don't need thousands of people, blah, blah blah. You just need a few people in the right place in a close state.
As bitterly divided as the country there are rabid people on both sides, many supervising elections in precincts or counties, who if they see the opportunity would try to throw a few thousand votes to their candidate. I wager the 4000 votes was such a freelance election rigger who did such a hamhanded job of it, it stuck out like a sore thumbs. These aren't the people you need to worry about, you need to worry about the people who are really good at it and I assure you the CIA has, over the years, trained a lot of people to be very good at rigging elections.
I'd agree its a mistake to fixate on electronic voting. There are a million ways to steal an election and you can do it with optical scanners or punch cards. Paperless electronic voting would be easier to do it wholesale, by rigging the software load, and hard to catch without a paper trail but its sure not the only way to steal an election. I wouldn't be surprised if the furor over paperless electronic voting was a sleight of hand. Get all the conspiracy theorists fixated on them, and keep them clean as a whistle so they conspiracy types look like asses blaming them. Meanwhile steal the election in punch card and optical scanner precincts where no one is looking.
Re:Liars (Score:4, Interesting)
Never said that. And I'm sure there are plenty of Bush voters who know exactly what's going on, but they're just sick fucks if you ask me.
when in fact many people simply do not agree with liberals and Democrats. It's this disconnect with reality and mainstream America that cost the liberals the election.
Hey, it's cool if you're not into the welfare state and higher taxes.
But remember, you still voted for a guy who illegally invaded a sovereign country on false pretenses and couldn't even do that right.
Worst of all, its impact on making Americans safer from terrorism has been completely negative, serving only to speed up the process of breeding new terror cells. So I might be arrogant, but at least I'm not short-sighted or confused.
As long as you--and people like you--continue to engage in this arrogance and deny the reality that your political preferences are in the minority you will continue to lose elections.
Yeah, sorry about that. I realize that my desire to see people happy, healthy and protected seems like just so much hippie crap to you, but I just can't stand the 'law of the jungle' rationale that so many conservatives use as the bedrock of their principles. We don't live in caves any more, you know.
Oh, and I've been in the minority all my life and I'm quite happy, thank you. But it doesn't mean I'm not right.
Re:Liars (Score:2, Interesting)
Is such an economic policy currently valid? Yes. However, that does not mean such an economic plan/policy is -the best- choice to mobilize the nation's economy, just that it is sufficient to. That's a matter of healthy debate.
"Why should we "get over" someone stealing an election?"
Karma. 1960. Illinois.
Just kidding.
On a more serious note, in answer, because you really have no concrete proof someone stole the election versus a massive fubar'd system or a system that was caught by surprise. You implicate deviousness where faulty design is more to blame for the mass problems.
In 2000, it was Florida and chads. I find it strangely interesting that some blame the Supreme Court's silly ruling for many of the ills in determining the election outcome, when you could equally point to the Florida state Supreme Court who didn't do their duty, forcing the federal level's hand. Most of the left hate that the court's decided, but frankly, the court's had decided well before the Supreme Court's involvement at the state level.
This election, it's also well documented the number of international vote watchers the left largely called for, plus the domestic poll watchers of both parties in every key county, and you still might proclaim that *the people on your side were bamboozled and in on it as well*? Either nothing result changing occurred or it did, and if it did, DNC's election watchers SUCK. Are your people THAT incompetent? I don't believe so.
You asked for and received and yet, still losing, proclaiming all went to shit. Does the system need improvement? Hell yes. Could things have gone better? Yes. But you sound more like a voter who's unhappy they didn't get their way than someone seeking a better system.
Argumentatively, even with the vote counts being discussed, Bush would have still won the popular vote in 2004. Does that reverse all the left's whining about Bush losing the popular vote but winning the electoral college count? iow, are you man/woman enough to say you therefore lost in 2004, just as you tried to validate Gore victory in 2000 without the electoral count?
On the movement of tax dollars, it's a system. Focus on one aspect, you miss the overall picture. You conveniently miss that the states that are red getting tax money are the states that are otherwise self-sufficient on basic human needs. A good number supply the food or water (yes, water, see Colorado river and it's distribution) distribution for that food production (e.g. to California which dominates in food production). There's a damn good reason for the exchange of tax dollars and resources, particularly when metro cost of living is 2.5x to 10x that of rural areas; for the same items, you're going to generate greater tax revenue for the same goods being sold. iow, a state's worth is not substantiated simply by taxation rate.
If you want to live in a blue state, that's YOUR choice as well. Don't want to live in a red? Fine too, but don't go crying some inequity because of taxation rates. Please do not say democracy like that's going to just win people over (sort of how you tried to use trickle down economies as evidence of a bad thing). Fact is, the system you cry for, that being take all the resources without due reciprocity in dollars (remember, you're complaining about the movement of tax dollars to the red states from the blue), is a FEUDAL system you fool, not a democracy. Domination by sole popular vote without checks? Look up aristrocracies and oligarchies.
And yet you want that system and someone still manage to think that's a democracy.
Yes, a fool like Bush ca be voted in. He can get some things done and destroy others. But given the slow progress of our system of government, even Bus
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:No kidding (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't you get it? The red states are the pork recipients. I grew up in the deep south and let me tell you, the locals loved them a heapin' helpin' of federal pork (with a side of Jesus). Military bases, government contractors, and agricultural subsidies are responsible for a huge chunk of economic activity. For all the small-government rhetoric you might think would prevail, I guarantee you've never heard such as a squeal in your life as a redneck town threatened with the draining of its trough.
Another poster got it right - the Republicans have morphed into the Dixiecrats, running on a platform of profligate federal spending and good ol' prejudice and fearmongering.
OK then stop being stupid? (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as you--and people like you--continue to engage in this arrogance and deny the reality that your political preferences are in the minority you will continue to lose elections.
I think the best way for liberals to not think of you conservatives as deceived conned stupid irrational non-educated sheepish bible thumpers, is for you conservatives to actually stop being decieved conned stupid irrational non-educated sheepish bible thumpers.
Or are you saying it's OK for you conservatives to be deceived conned stupid irrational non-educated sheepish bible thumpers? Should liberals be like you deceived conned stupid irrational non-educated sheepish bible thumpers to prevent further liberal arrogance?
Criticism is a perfectly valid thing. You conservatives need to recognize your faults, but, unfortunately, I suspect you don't think you have faults. There was a study published in a psychology journal a few years back that came to the obvious conclusion: Stupid people don't know they're stupid, and smart people know their faults. Do you think this applies to conservatives? If so, tell me, what are your faults? What are the faults of conservatism? What do you believe is wrong with the Republican party?
Now tell me who's the arrogant ones here...
Re:Liars (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh yeah? So you would support the right of a rape victim to kill her newborn, as I am sure often happened in old times? If not, you are recognizing there is a difference between a fetus and a child.
Also, the risk of a childbirth is close to one of donating a kidney. Would you forcibly drag his/her mother into surgery to donate one if needed for child's survival? Then why force her to risk a similar chance of death for a far less developed organism that is by every measure less sentinent than a cat?
Re:Liars (Score:3, Interesting)
Wierd (Score:2, Interesting)
Clinton, during his term, lied about a private matter (that was really nobody's business but his own and the people directly involved) and they tried to impeach him for it.
Bush has lied in public and for the record about matters concerning national security that affects not only the American people, but has also resulted in instability in the international relations worldwide and he gets a second term...?!
These reports about tampering do help in restoring my faith in the sanity of the American people...
Re:You misrepresent Democrats (Score:2, Interesting)
How is having sex (even using contraception) and getting pregnant a responsible thing? You may not have noticed but there is NO contraception that is 100% effective. It even says it on the package of every contraception you can buy. Not planning for that other
By the way, I was an "unplanned pregnancy"
Amazing that people can forget history so quickly (Score:3, Interesting)
That is not just 'lie{ing} about a private matter.'
The sad thing is, 5 years later, there's still so many ignorant people like you running around telling people that the impeachment proceedings were just because Clinton "lied about a private matter."
Re:Simply amazing.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, you may hate it, but that's the cost of democracy. It's not easy. That's what distinguishes democracy from going down to the 7/11 to buy a Coke.
if you want democracy, you have to deal with the expense, the waiting, and the tedium. Of course, you could always try fascism, communism or corporatism if your country doesn't want to deal with the hassle of having fair elections.