Will Hackers Try To Disrupt the Iowa Caucuses? 162
Hugh Pickens writes "The Iowa Republican Party is boosting the security of the electronic systems it will use to count the first votes of the 2012 presidential campaign after receiving a mysterious threat to its computers in a video urging its supporters to shut down the Iowa caucuses .... 'It's very clear the data consolidation and data gathering from the caucuses, which determines the headlines the next morning, who might withdraw or resign from the process, all of that is fragile,' says Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa who has consulted for both political parties. The state GOP fears such a delay could disrupt the traditional influence of Iowa's first-in-the-nation vote. 'With the eyes of the media on the state, the last thing we want to do is have a situation where there is trouble with the reporting system,' says Wes Enos, a member of the Iowa GOP's central committee. The GOP is encouraging party activists who run the precinct votes to use paper ballots instead of a show of hands, which has been the practice in some areas so the ballots can provide a backup in the event of any later confusion about the results. 'There is really only one way — and it needn't be a secret — to help assure that results cannot easily be manipulated by either Anonymous or by GOP officials themselves,' writes Brad Friedman. 'The hand-counted paper ballot system, with decentralized results posted at the "precincts," is the only way to try and protect against manipulation of the results from either insiders or outsiders.'"
Already been done without any hacking (Score:5, Informative)
This year the GOP primary rules have changed to assign delegates proportionally instead of winner-take-all. This makes it much harder to get 50% of the delegates and win the nomination through the actual vote. Instead we'll likely end up with a brokered convention [endoftheam...ndream.com] where the party leaders will elect whomever they want. This can effectively remove "undesirable" candidates whom the people want but the party doesn't (meaning Ron Paul).
Re:First Votes (Score:5, Informative)
There would be incredible outcry if a politically large state got to go first and make the little states even less relevant, like CA or PA or NY or FL.
It's this kind of comment that demonstrates how undemocratic our system is. One person, one vote should be the law of the land. If that were the case, what size state you live in would be irrelevant.
Re:Easiest way to end voter fraud (Score:2, Informative)
Punish it for what it is: an attempted coup. Maybe this shouldn't count as "real voter fraud," but in general, democratic societies ought to punish organized voter fraud as a form of "attempting to overthrow the government." If the federal government were to hang a few people for attempting to systematically defraud the electorate, I think you'd see a lot fewer people willing to engage in the practice.
Here are a few:
How the GOP Rules America: Voter Suppression and Political Apartheid
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/yellow/36325/how-the-gop-rules-america-voter-suppression-and-political-apartheid [smirkingchimp.com]
Patterns of Touch Screen Voting Machine Fraud Identified and Documented in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and Elsewhere in 2004
http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html [flcv.com]
Republican voter suppression: Maria’s Story
http://horsesass.org/?p=39248 [horsesass.org]
New Requirements Under HB 2067 (Voter Suppression Law)
http://www.sunfloweract.org/hb2067new [sunfloweract.org]
(in short, birth certificate based voter ID tends to disenfranchise elderly voters who were born at a time when birth certificates were not routinely issued -- even Ronald Reagan's bitch certificate was created many years after the fact)
Map of voter ID requirements:
http://www.ncsl.org/?tabid=16602 [ncsl.org]
The real question (Score:2, Informative)
is do hackers need to? The Republican candidates themselves seem to be disrupting the whole affair by being a clown show.
Re:First Votes (Score:5, Informative)
There would be incredible outcry if a politically large state got to go first and make the little states even less relevant, like CA or PA or NY or FL.
It's this kind of comment that demonstrates how undemocratic our system is. One person, one vote should be the law of the land. If that were the case, what size state you live in would be irrelevant.
Our system is quite democratic. But what you (and many others) seem to forget is that we don't have one system, we have fifty. Each state holds it's own election -- not for president, though, but for the slate of people who will represent the state in the electoral collage. They're the ones who elect the president, not you.
Now most states "bind" the electors such that they're forced to vote for whichever presidential candidate's slate gets the most votes in the state, so to make it "easier" these days the ballot just lists the presidential candidate instead of the people pledging to vote in the electoral collage for that candidate. I'm sure it's just a side effect that the ballot being that way makes people think they're voting for the president, when they're not. So yes, state elections for the electoral college are democratic, but so what? This country wasn't supposed to be a democracy anyway, it was supposed to be a republic.
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
Why should the Iowa primary have verifiable paper ballots, so results can't be changed, and then have the entire main U.S. election be electronic with questionable machines that can be?
Not the exact answer to what you asked, but relevent to the question anyway:
Iowa's party-candidate-selection-system is a caucus, run by the parties. It is not a primary and is not run by the state. You gather at someone's house, rented hall, community center or wherever your party arranged for your precinct, cast a ballot and sit around arguing for your candidate(s) until someone gets a majority.
Caucuses seem to favor the most dedicated party members' votes, since it requires a bigger commitment from the voter than a primary.
Our system was never designed democratic (Score:5, Informative)
The US is, and always has been, a Constitutional Federal Republic. It was never designed as a direct democracy and indeed has many provisions to prevent such a thing. The Constitution itself is one such thing. It is an undemocratic document. It is specifically designed to be hard to alter. You can't just have 50%+1 people vote to alter it, the process requires a much greater majority, and puts power in the hands ultimately of the states, not the people or the federal government.
I know that "undemocratic" is supposed to be a scare word that gets people to agree with you but when you look at things logically you discover that the US was never designed to be a direct democracy. Also looking at the way some things have gone, you can see how maybe that is a good thing. Something to be said for the fact that a simple majority of people can't just dictate to the minority how things will be done.
So yes, the American system isn't democratic, it is republican. Not in the sense of the political parties, but in the sense of the systems of government. It has a strong democratic tradition, more than many republics, but it is still a republic. What's more it is a republic of independent states meaning that there is a level of state autonomy.
If you don't like it that's fine but then what you have to propose is a constitutional amendment to more or less eliminate large parts of the Constitution. The only way the system could become a direct democracy would be to first alter the way the government works to a large degree and second to remove this super legal document that sits above other laws.
Such a thing could be done, but you are going to need to convince a lot of people, takes 75% of the states to amend the Constitution.
Re:it's the (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not a Secret Ballot (Score:4, Informative)
It also is not a secret ballot. So changing the vote would be harder since the people at the precint saw how people voted. It is pretty hard to change the vote later when the vote is a show of hands. Since it is not a secret ballot you are more likely to get things like voter itimidation by employers, and vote buying.
Actually, for the Iowa Republican caucus [iowagop.org], it is a secret straw poll. In the Democratic Party [iowademocrats.org] caucus, supporters of candidates divide into groups based on the candidate they prefer (which would obviously not be secret). In both cases, only registered voters in the precinct are allowed to participate, but you can register on the spot.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
Good, he's a nutjob.
Ron Paul wants to define life as starting at conception, build a fence along the US-Mexico border, prevent the Supreme Court from hearing cases on the Establishment Clause or the right to privacy, permitting the return of sodomy laws and the like (a bill which he has repeatedly re-introduced), pull out of the UN, disband NATO, end birthright citizenship, deny federal funding to any organization which "which presents male or female homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style or which suggest that it can be an acceptable life style" along with destroying public education and social security, and abolish the Federal Reserve in order to put America back on the gold standard. He was also the sole vote against divesting US federal government investments in corporations doing business with the genocidal government of the Sudan.
Oh, and he believes that the Left is waging a war on religion and Christmas, he's against gay marriage, is against the popular vote, opposes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, wants the estate tax repealed, is STILL making racist remarks, believes that the Panama Canal should be the property of the United States, and believes in New World Order conspiracy theories, not to mention his belief that the International Baccalaureate program is UN mind control.