US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform 302
An anonymous reader writes "A year ago, we discussed this on Slashdot: E-Voting Reform In an Out Year?. The point was that due to the hoard of problems with electronic (and mechanical) voting, it is best to approach reform in an out year, when it is not on everyone's mind yet too late to do anything about it. Well, we failed, didn't we? Another election year is upon us, and our vote is less secure, less reliable, and less meaningful than ever. To reference the last article, we still have no open source voting, no end-to-end auditable voting systems and no open source governance. So don't complain if this election is stolen. You forgot to fix the system."
"We"? (Score:5, Informative)
"We"? Who is this "we"? Here in New Hampshire, they passed a paper trail law [votersunite.org] in 1994 and we've not had any of these problems.
And the obvious question is . . . . (Score:4, Informative)
Full Spectrum Dominance: Why transactional data matters
During the Bush administration, at least on several occasions, the entire warrantless eavesdropping or wiretapping and FISA made the national news cycle for several days ---- yet each time, oddly enough, it was knocked off by the news of national immigration marches.
What exactly was really accomplished by those national immigration marches?
Other than occupying the news space on those days?
Next obvious question would be who owned those Spanish-language radio stations responsible for organizing those marches?
At that time, the major financial stake in those stations belonged to the private equity firm, the Blackstone Group, chaired by Peter G. Peterson, protégé of David Rockefeller.
During that time the Blackstone Group also had a financial stake in telecoms in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, Italy, Portugal and Malta (Malta being an important nexus point, or physical exchange point, between Europe, North Africa and the Middle East), as well as one of the three major privatized global satellite networks at that period, New Skies Network (officially later sold off, but we never checked to see if Blackstone Group actually owned the company it was sold to?).
So those national marches, which knocked warrantless wiretapping off the news cycle and involved AT&T, were organized by Blackstone Group-owned radio stations, chaired by the fellow whose financial-economic-political mentor was David Rockefeller.
Now AT&T was broken up --- on paper at least --- but can anyone provide definite data to prove it was ever actually financially divested?
Negative!
Now, traditionally, AT&T was a Rockefeller-Morgan financial entity, which, by the way, happens to have re-conglomerated back to its original form, thanks in part to President Bill Clinton’s Telecommunications Act of 1996.
And who led the charge in congress to grant immunity to AT&T and those telecoms involved in that warrantless wiretapping for the government?
None other than Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia!
My oh my, how those coincidences pile up?
Recently, some very serious legislation has passed into law --- while other equally dangerous legislation has failed, for now --- although that failed legislation attacked net neutrality (equality of access to the Internet), it was really only to make into law that which is quickly becoming reality --- the end of net neutrality!
Laws have been passed, in America and Europe and elsewhere, requiring ISPs to retain your data for 1 to 3 years or more.
Why is this important to the ruling elites?
Transactional data, surrounding information, dot connection, global linkage.
Using existing DPI techniques (Deep Packet Inspection), they can virtually identify and extract information about you, your life, your family, the like of which most people cannot even imagine.
Data mining hit critical mass around 2003 to 2004; and all it then required to identify a person exactly was their age and zip code --- today it probably requires less.
A little while ago, a fellow from the New America Foundation wrote a book on ExxonMobil --- focusing on the personalities of its chief executives, and went on a book tour where not a single person who interviewed him (including NPR’s Terry Gross and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!) inquired as to the ownership of ExxonMobil?
Now isn’t that freaking amazing? ? ? ?
Of course, New America Foundation is funded by the Peterson Foundation, endowed by Peter G. Peterson, protégé of David Rockefeller. (ExxonMobil is a re-combining of the original Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Companies --- which were once broken up --- at least on paper --- as no valid data exists to suggest otherwise.)
AT&T? ExxonMobil? Are we beginning to note a pa
Also no evidence of a real problem (Score:3, Informative)
Another election year is upon us, and our vote is less secure, less reliable, and less meaningful than ever. To reference the last article, we still have no open source voting, no end-to-end auditable voting systems and no open source governance.
We also have no credible evidence of any organized tampering of the vote, either in mechanical or electronic forms. The systems may be wrong, but they are probably no worse than they have ever been, and I haven't seen any smoking gun saying that the machines were tampered with.
I do see 3 forms of election fraud/dirty tricks commonly alleged:
1. Fraudulent registrations. Indicated by people with no valid address or suspicious numbers of people residing at the same address. Not something an electronic voting system can address.
2. Felons voting while still on probation. Not clear that felons vote for one party vs another, but even if it is organized, not something that e-voting would address.
3. Dirty tricks along the lines of too few ballots or machines delivered to certain precincts causing long lines. Or making precincts inconveniently large. These are potentially done by one party or the other, but a certain number of these snafus are certainly due to incompetence or unexpectedly high voter turnouts. Also not something that changing the voting machines would address.
So what is the problem that we are trying to solve again?
Re:"We"? (Score:5, Informative)
And in my NH town, we just use a simple paper ballot with checkboxes. There are about 800 voters in a typical election and about ten volunteers spend an hour tallying them. I think the town buys a few sandwiches from the convenience store in appreciation. At the end, they use a website to report the results to the Secretary of State's office (used to be a phone call) and lock the ballots in a wooden chest in case of a recount or audit.
Somebody explain how this system doesn't scale to any appropriate-sized town/district/ward...
Re:In other words, (Score:4, Informative)
... we have an election where close races are open to challenges based on the inability to have a reliable recount.
Not only that, but polling is down to such a near exact science someone *cough* Florida in 2000 *cough* could finagle staffing and access to voting centers which prevent a large population of registered voters passing through to cast their votes, thus throttling the representation of their precinct and overall vote count. i.e. Select some very slow or officious people to staff it, make sure there are no where near enough polling booths, transportation or parking is highly problematic and when the doors shut at 8 PM you've stifled the vote, because you knew ahead of time this area would go against your party.