Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States (vice.com) 244
Kim Zetter, reporting for Motherboard: The nation's top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company
installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them. In a letter sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in April and obtained recently by Motherboard, Election Systems and Software acknowledged that it had "provided pcAnywhere remote connection software ... to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006," which was installed on the election-management system ES&S sold them.
The statement contradicts what the company told me and fact checkers for a story I wrote for the New York Times in February. At that time, a spokesperson said ES&S had never installed pcAnywhere on any election system it sold. "None of the employees -- including long-tenured employees, has any knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software," the spokesperson said. ES&S did not respond on Monday to questions from Motherboard, and it's not clear why the company changed its response between February and April. Lawmakers, however, have subpoena powers that can compel a company to hand over documents or provide sworn testimony on a matter lawmakers are investigating, and a statement made to lawmakers that is later proven false can have greater consequence for a company than one made to reporters.
The statement contradicts what the company told me and fact checkers for a story I wrote for the New York Times in February. At that time, a spokesperson said ES&S had never installed pcAnywhere on any election system it sold. "None of the employees -- including long-tenured employees, has any knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software," the spokesperson said. ES&S did not respond on Monday to questions from Motherboard, and it's not clear why the company changed its response between February and April. Lawmakers, however, have subpoena powers that can compel a company to hand over documents or provide sworn testimony on a matter lawmakers are investigating, and a statement made to lawmakers that is later proven false can have greater consequence for a company than one made to reporters.
Not a big deal (Score:3, Interesting)
It's plausible that an admin or tech installed it for convenience at certain trouble customers and current execs just weren't aware. It doesn't mean they lied. This was 15-20 years ago. Pretty common practice.
43 states had machines older than 2006 (Score:4, Interesting)
Reading up on verified paper voting trails. (=My personal wishlist item for verifiable elections) reveals some disturbing stuff from 2016's election:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/paperless-pennsylvania-can-swing-state-verify-2016-vote-n660266
"Even benign breakdowns of aging equipment — 43 states have machines that are more than a decade old ", i.e. states with voting machines from before 2006, the new standards didn't come in until 2007 and ESS only removed this software on machines made AFTER 2007.
You claimed it was 15-20 years ago, but the article says 2007 was the time they removed them and then only for new voting machines sold.
"when Pennsylvanians go to the polls to elect a new president in a month, more than 80 percent of them will be using machines that don't have a paper-backed audit."
Let me guess, Pennsylvania was polling strongly for Clinton yet elected Trump by a slim and plausible margin.
"Hillary Clinton leading by up to 12 points in Pennsylvania..."
(From Wikipedia after the article)
Trump wins Pennsylvania by 48.18% to 47.46%...
I'm guessing that this is odd.
2012, strong Obama, 2008 strong Obama, 2004 kerry, 2000 Al Gore....
Yeh right, and now you can't even verify it because you didn't have a paper trail to verify against.
FFS,
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Most voting equipment is decades old. It's very expensive and rarely used. Not to mention the training involved for mostly elderly volunteers. The more complicated you make the voting machines, the more tax dollars are needed to buy/maintain and the less reliable they will be for the workers volunteering to run them. I've been involved with voting technology since the mid 1990's and as a professional I would LOVE to go back to the old manual pull-lever machines whose results are then carried by hand to c
Re:Not a big deal my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting machines decide who gets a huge amount of power in our government. Backdoor access via a software package whose source code had been leaked and exploited, leading to the manufacturer recommending that it be removed, is huge goddamn deal.
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It's pretty common practice in your country that machines with highly sensitive areas of operation don't get audited for such common things like blatantly obvious backdoors and deliberately installed remote control software?
Remind me to never use an ATM in the US.
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No, sadly its this kind of misinformation meant to reinforce a false belief in election-rigging that's become common practice.
Re:Not a big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
Even more of a reason to dump those voting machines.
People pretty much have to trust paper and pencil. It's something everyone understands and trying to spin some conspiracy of how someone "stole" the election is pretty hard that way.
That gets way easier with a tool that few people understand, even fewer can audit and only a handful actually get anywhere close to actually auditing it.
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"You think they can steal dollars and not change votes? Even when basic security measures are not taken? Even when you don't even put the printed audit trail on the voting machine?
Seriously?"
I'm in favor of going back to mechanic machines with hand-counted ballots but I suspect you would protest at having to wait a few days to learn the results of such an election. I also suspect that no matter what level of security is implemented in electronic voting that you would still dream up an excuse for how an ele
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If any system should be "airgapped" it's one the controls the political levers to the biggest market in the world.
I mean, which black hat wouldn't want to game that system?
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I mean, which black hat wouldn't want to game that system?
Judging by the news, quite a few Red Hats are interested in it also.
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The story is very misleading, and I suspect that is on purpose.
I've spent about two decades working on election technology and voter registration data and could write volumes about it. None of that matters though because this is just another propaganda piece meant to reinforce false beliefs of a certain segment.
Garbage systems. (Score:5, Insightful)
If your electronic voting booth runs a commercial operating system then you have already failed to secure your systems.
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Meh - security-by-obscurity isn't quite the answer. A properly stripped, hardened and configured *nix kernel could secure things more than well enough, and require a lot less effort, money, time, etc. At least, as long as you keep up on patches, but that would be the case on any properly-maintained uber-proprietary OS.
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It is quite possible to intentionally introduce an exploitable bug [underhanded-c.org] without it looking like sabotage.
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You could use Minix 3. The kernel itself is tiny; and each part is isolated, so auditable individually. High-level certification is fairly doable; more to the point, you can audit the outside-controllable path and strip out things you don't need.
For a touch screen voting machine, you'll need graphical display, touch screen input, and disk access. That means file systems. It means the capacity to run and schedule processes. It means the capacity to manage memory.
It doesn't mean BFQ and anticipatory
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In our core business, our customers are wise to these practices and don't put u
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No, I'm simply pointing out the theoretical capacity to produce something of some measure of security.
I'd like a full brief on these practices and how they differ between the public and private markets, ready for public release, with case studies and recommendations. Salient details and the limited discussion necessary to explain them. This is one facet of government I'd like to see nailed down once and for all, and nobody has stepped up to make it a major issue because we're all more concerned about g
Re:Garbage systems. (Score:4, Insightful)
You are talking about software engineering approaches to securing the system. Those are important, but the overall system design has to be secure, otherwise it doesn't matter how secure the operating system is.
A better approach would be to have the system print out human readable, machine readable paper ballots, which the voter carries from the voting booth to a secure ballot box. This wouldn't prevent the machine from mismarking ballots, but there would be a high probability of someone detecting an effort large enough to swing an election.
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You are absolutely correct. Blame the media for that - they demand instant results.
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If your electronic voting booth runs a commercial operating system then you have already failed to secure your systems.
Yes and no. An electronic voting booth running a commercial operating system can be reasonably secure if it's not accessible from the Internet or if it uses security software and VPN technology for all communication. That being said, all electronic systems running an OS are vulnerable to having malware loaded locally. Once a bad actor has physical access to anything (i,e. through local access, social engineering, etc.) then all bets are off.
The only way to be sure is to have a paper trail. If you're goi
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Why does it even have an operating system. It's not as if it needs to be able to double as a word processor or run the occasional spreadsheet. It is a single purpose device that could run a fairly simple state-machine, a few hundred lines of C.
There may well be a complex system that loads the ballot rules into it, but after that its job is just to accept input on some push buttons, light a few lights, spit out a little record on its serial port to a printer and move on.
Hell, its "display" could be just a f
The big heist (Score:5, Insightful)
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The best crime is to steal the whole country.
. . . even better would be . . . stealing someone else's country . . .
Whether that can be done is still open for debate.
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The Man finally figured out that stealing money is for chumps. The best crime is to steal the whole country.
That trains has left the station, because of lobbying.
If you as a voter sell your vote, that's a crime. If the person you vote for sells his votes in Congress, that's constituent services.
Admin credentials written on the side, too? (Score:5, Insightful)
"provided pcAnywhere remote connection software ... to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006,"
The same PCAnywhere that was so egregiously exploitable that Symantec - Symantec of all companies, gave out free copies of version 12 to users who owned literally any prior version no matter how old it was? THAT is the product that was being utilized on voting machines?!
It has become abundantly clear that any company selling technology-based solutions to the government which can successfully win a bid should under no circumstances be allowed to do the job.
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Now where is the kickback in that?
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by Opportunist ( 166417 )
Now where is the kickback in that?
Username checks out.
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I'm pushing for voting systems that are stable and democratic--systems like Schulze and Ranked Pairs. Providing software and systems to handle the votes and give the public a means of validation has a political impact.
My state got rid of its voting machines and went to paper ballots. Each ballot went into a machine for scanning. Even with a recount by hand, I question if the human election staff ever misread a vote due to fatigue and routine. Do they miscount? County Executive went to Johnny Olszews
You're assuming they're incompetent (Score:2)
Primal scream (Score:5, Informative)
I TOLD YOU SO GOD DAMN IT.
Why would you assume they wouldn't install a backdoor? WHY??? Changing election totals gave them trillions of dollars in tax cuts and complete power.
Don't talk about open-source replacements. Any solution with electrons will be hacked and controlled. Go back to paper, the way Canada does, or did before the Tories rammed e-voting in. I wonder why, I wonder.
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Ah, the mythical "they". "They" seem to be capable of all sorts of things, collecting trillions of dollars, complete power. No one can compete with "they". Way to inflate a molehill into a mountain. This is one tiny voting machine company. You should work for Fox.
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Mechanical voting machines. That's the answer. Incredibly difficult to hack on a widespread basis. Essentially impossible to hack remotely.
Can't fix the old ones? Bunk. Re-tooling is not just eminently possible, 3d printing makes it nearly trivial.
I have noticed it's always the right wing (Score:2)
Re:Primal scream (Score:4, Insightful)
Paper ballots with machine tallying combines the most of the best features of both systems and is cheap, logistically simple, and auditable. It also scales with license or technical limitations. I live in a state which uses that system and if turnout is heavy at the polling place they just set up another row of cheap pop-up voting booths, doubling the polling place's throughput for less than a price of a single voting machine.
Of course one man's bug is sometimes another man's feature.
I'm convinced that the reason these machines are so popular despite their cost, insecurity, and logistical burden is that they enable political parties to manipulate election results, not by hacking, but simply using the bottleneck they represent to generate long lines in precincts unfavorable to them.
Seriously? Wow, big woop.. (Score:2)
They put PCAnywhere on the MANAGEMENT systems on a few customer's systems. This was NOT on voting machines.
Folks do need to realize that this risk pretty much requires internet access and requires firewall access rules that allow it. This is not some huge risk and is easily mitigated by your standard network firewall configuration. Your home router would be sufficient to prevent unauthorized access using PCAnywhere. Big woop.
So why did the story change? Because, it wasn't part of the normal systems
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"The voting management systems are the machines that actually count the votes!"
Not on the ES&S systems being described. It's not your fault for not knowing that since they conveniently left those details out. The point is to reinforce the myth that the elections are rigged against you when you lose.
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You have (thus far) written nine posts claiming "NOTHING TO SEE FOLKS" but have provided zero actual data or citiations, just your personal assurances. Can you provide a link to any source that supports your assertion here?
This alleged "fact" is not found in any of the reporting on this that I have seen such as original New York Magazine story [nytimes.com], updates by Motherboard [vice.com], The Verified Voting watchdog project [thevotingnews.com], etc.
You wouldn't be, y'know, just making stuff up now, would you?
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I'm not the one making extraordinary claims. The idea that PcAnywhere being installed on a management system 15 years ago has fuck-all to do with anything is the extraordinary claim that requires evidence, and there is none.
I'm not defending electronic voting by the way. It's a horrible idea.
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You're an ID-10-T and a moron.
The voting management systems are the machines that actually count the votes!
Where would you like to put your hack? Somehow on the 1000+ individual voting machines in a county that folks walk up to? or the one ring (machine) that rules them all that actually counts the votes?
And it could be something fairly small.... On each race, for every vote for party x, adjust 5% of votes on party x down by one and party y up by one. Enough that a landslide would still ring true, but a typical 5-10% spread election would be shifted without notice... could even add logic that if the actual election is really close (under say 3%) - make no adjustment! That way there is no scrutiny in the system.
You are suggesting these systems where hacked via PCAnywhere that basically *requires* local access to initiate the connection. Given your scenario is hypothetical and obvious requires more than just some on line script kitty level hacking to compromise the system, but includes the requirement of having unauthorized administrative and physical access to the systems in question, I think you have overlooked some much bigger security issues.
Then there is the AC posting calling someone a moron angle. Got to
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Out going to where? Norton's server? NAT affords you some security here by limiting firewall connections to OUTBOUND only, outside traffic cannot initiate a connection unless you have port forwarding turned on, in this case for PCAnywhere.
You see, the ISSUE here is that you can get out, but ONLY when somebody initiates the connection from the inside. Just having PCAnywhere on your system does NOT make it immediately exploitable. PCAnywhere does not just broadcast it's existence and getting IN though a N
We no longer have representation in government. (Score:4, Insightful)
We are subjects, and we have no control.... if we ever did.
Election management system? (Score:2)
So, are they saying the electronic voting machines, the scanner machines... or are they talking about the systems that the votes are uploaded *to*?
The last would make the most sense... and why change individual votes, when you can change the uploaded vote data files, and thus change the totals, via that one system?
This damn well ought to be jail time for the CEO.
Careful, you won't like what you find (Score:2, Insightful)
Careful, you might not like what you find!
If we start really looking at these voting machines, we'll soon uncover the Diebold CEO's comments promising to deliver the 2004 election to George W. Bush (specifically Ohio, which they did, and which deviated from exit poles with huge sample bases- by a whopping 6% -- a wide enough margin to trigger new elections in other countries like the Ukraine, but mysteriously not in Ohio). It is likely we'll find many state and local elections have been "stolen," and proba
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Personally, I'm not as worried about Oregon's voting computers as I am the potential for fraud across the far weaker link - all of Oregon votes by mail. All it would really take is a properly-bribed postman or two to collect a few spare ballots (and discard a few ballots from parts of his route that vote heavily for The Other Guy), a handful of pencils, a roll of stamps, and a few cohorts willing to help you 'vote'. The voter would never know that anything was amiss.
(there's other ways that mail-in ballots
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and yet after spending millions of dollars on dozens of investigations, no one has found any significant voter fraud in recent memory.
but the right has demonstrably suppressed minority and democratic likely voting through stacks of well documented dirty tricks including bogus voter purges ( based on matching first and last names alone, as if those never are shared ), removing polling places, reducing machines in those voting places, etc... not to mention gerrymandering voting districts past any semblance of
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We have no way of knowing how bad the voter fraud problem is
Such a convenient lie to believe.
Not a lie. We have a very good indication that physical voter fraud so low to be considered nonexistant. Physical meaning someone votes twice or someone is litterally stuffing paper ballots. We have good systems to track the first, and physical monitoring to protect against the second.
Electronic fraud is a lot more difficult to know. It could be small across the country. It could be very significant in localized locations. Presumably, persons with the know-how to do electronic fraud would know how to
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There's no way to catch these because we don't bother verifying that the people voting are who they say they are.
This is simply not true, there is verification.
No, there isn't.
You need a name and an address to vote. That's it. It doesn't have to be yours.
Re:wow digging (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, I would be more concerned about a properly bribed election official or two losing votes in a voting machine or even worse, a voting machine with remote access https://www.newsweek.com/elect... [newsweek.com].
This article from Vox highlights one of vote-by-mail strengths which is that it is very distributed and hard to tamper with at large scale. It's second strength is that is a fair process making voting accessible to anyone who is registered to vote. No need for polling places or special times and days, only a voting deadline of when your vote must be in an order to be counted. https://www.vox.com/policy-and... [vox.com]
of course, if you want to steal an election, here's your how to: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018... [foreignpolicy.com]
Re: wow digging (Score:2)
The USPS is not a guaranteed delivery system. A mailed-in ballot cannot be guaranteed to have been filled out by the voter, nor delivered on time, nor delivered without having been manipulated on transit. It's a terrible way to cast a vote.
Re:wow digging (Score:4, Informative)
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All it would really take is a properly-bribed postman or two to collect a few spare ballots (and discard a few ballots from parts of his route that vote heavily for The Other Guy), a handful of pencils, a roll of stamps, and a few cohorts willing to help you 'vote'.
All that, and you've change 0.02% of the vote.
Yes, there rarely are elections which are that close, but you wouldn't know this is one of those situations beforehand.
Intercepting vote-by-mail from the voter is hard because it's so distributed. You'd need a lot of people involved in your conspiracy. Instead, you'd alter the vote it in the election offices, where you need far fewer people....just the guy who patches the software on the tabulators. However, that's the same with traditional voting systems.
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but a very small number of votes have swung local elections.
Very small numbers of votes have swung elections at all levels. But again, it is extremely rare that the election is actually that close and you won't know it is that close ahead of time.
So you assemble a very large army of conspirators, and get caught because the more people, the more leaks.
Or you assemble a very small number of conspirators, over and over again until the election is that close. But doing it over and over again makes it far more likely that you will get caught.
Or you assemble a very smal
Sure, because what mailman... (Score:2)
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"But removing dead people from the voter roles is racist! Somehow. According to liberals."
WTF are you babbling on about magasnowflake? The list of things that republicans terrified of brown or poor people do to suppress the vote is long and well documented.
"No other nation in the world lets you go in, say "oh yeah, I'm a registered voter" and then just trusts you on that. But we do."
Citation please, mister expert on every voting process in the world...
Should we worry that this company thinks it is ok to rou
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. Sigh.
Re: Is that goverment ID free?? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm in the center, and I am seeing BOTH sides being ridiculously incalcitrant here. Democrats bitch that any voter ID proposal is bad before even looking at it, and Republicans complain that voter fraud is rampant despite the total lack of evidence. Never mind both sides being hypocritical and creating gerrymandered districts.
I think we should let everyone eligible be able to vote. If they don't have an ID or someone to vouch for them, then create a provisional ballot. It may slow down the counting, but I'd rather it take months to decide the winner than to disenfranchise someone. I also think college students should vote if they're living 2/3rds of the year in the county, and I think that ex convicts should vote also if they've served their time, and I think armed forces serving over time should be allowed to vote.
Voting is every citizens right and duty and no one should stand in the way of it. That's the top priority, and I don't have issues with voter ID if it doesn't get in the way of anyone of any political persuasion from voting.
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But removing dead people from the voter roles is racist! Somehow. According to liberals.
No whats racist is that they seem to only remove "dead" people that are black, with no notification, 6 months before the election, and then oops turns out those people were still alive but it's too late for you to re-register because election day is today.
And all of this pales to the fact that we don't even bother checking if the people voting are who they claim they are! No other nation in the world lets you go in, say "oh yeah, I'm a registered voter" and then just trusts you on that. But we do.
You've never actually voted in the USA have you? They generally do verify your identity at the poles when you go to vote.
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"No whats racist is that they seem to only remove "dead" people that are black, with no notification, 6 months before the election, and then oops turns out those people were still alive but it's too late for you to re-register because election day is today."
Except that never happens, it's just agit-prop for people who won't bother to check it out. Voter roles are culled based on specific criteria, usually based on voter inactivity. There are exactly zero verifiable instances of just black people being rem
Re: wow digging (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really racist is the idea that minorities are just incapable of getting an ID.
I support voter ID, but a California driver license costs $35. A California ID card (drinker's license) is $30. At the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are those for whom this is too much of an expense. Demanding payment in exchange for the privilege of voting is an illegal poll tax. Either change the Constitution or offer free IDs.
Re: wow digging (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just the ID itself, but the supporting documentation.
A new copy of my birth certificate costs $50, or I have the option of traveling 2000 miles to get a free copy at the county's offices.
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Re: wow digging (Score:5, Informative)
Also, even if it weren't overly hard to get the documentation (and I'm not saying it isn't), the voter ID folks are playing the margins. If they can prevent a small number of Democrats from voting in a few states in a close election, they can pull off an upset victory like Trump's.
That's why the Russians targeted black voters with fake "Black Lives Matter" groups either misdirecting potential black voters or telling them not to bother voting. And it worked in places like Michigan and Winsconsin. Along with voter ID laws that similarly suppressed the black vote enough to tip the balance.
The Electoral College allocation of extra votes to small population states is a problem too. But that's in the Constitution and hard to change. Voter suppression enjoys no such protection, and needs to be fought if you believe in one-person, one-vote.
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The Electoral College allocation of extra votes to small population states is a problem too.
That's not a problem, it's by design. It's specifically done that way to prevent populous states from taking the reins of the whole nation. This is supposed to be a nation of mostly sovereign states with a limited federal government.
However much you think a person in California, Florida, or New York deserves representation, the STATES of Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont deserve representation.
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That's not a problem, it's by design. It's specifically done that way to prevent populous states from taking the reins of the whole nation.
Nope. That's the point of the Senate.
Electoral College votes are 2 for Senators plus one for each member of the House. Since number of Representatives are based on population, the Electoral College does not protect small states. They get the 2 votes every state gets from Senators, and then the small states get far less votes from number of Representatives.
There's two things skewing the Electoral College at the moment. #1 is the winner-take-all nature of most states mean only the states that are closely-
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California offers a fee waiver now for basic ID.
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"Poor people shouldn't vote."
What the actual fuck, dude. Also, you do realize that the majority of people that voted for Trump were poor, right?
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Bullshit. If you're incapable of getting a couple hundred together for an id, you don't have your shit together enough that you should be voting.
That's not what US law says. Everyone has the right to vote.
There's no systemic oppression keeping people down.
Some of the people implementing this voter suppression have been pretty open about it, especially when they were among friends and didn't realize what they said would be public. But their actions speak louder than words.
If you're legitimately discriminated against, it means a big payday. People who claim discrimination and oppression, or such on others behalf, do so out of ignorant sentimentality, or rationalization of poor life decisions.
If you honestly think that all discrimination in the USA leads to a 'big payday' you are sorely deluded. Possibly terminally deluded if you were a minority.
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That's not what US law says. Everyone has the right to vote.
That's not what US law says. States govern their own elections.
Re: wow digging (Score:4, Informative)
What's really racist is the idea that minorities are just incapable of getting an ID.
My step son turned 18 & never got an I.D. He didn't drive (or fucking work) so he never bothered. He wanted to vote. Getting all the documents together & getting him to the office to get a state I.D. was quite challenging. His dad had no idea where his birth certificate was so we had to get a copy. Without a car & financial resources, we would not have been able to do it.
When we needed a marriage license I had no birth certificate. I had to go quite a long way to pay for a copy of it. I had a valid license, a passport, but no, they had to have the birth certificate. No public transportation would get me there & there was no way to get it for free.
So it does not matter if your a minority or the color of you skin. What matters is the resources or the lack thereof. Voter I.D. laws & voter registration purges absolutely & veritably suppress the vote. That & lack of funding in poor areas helps a ton to keep the poor from voting. 2 hour waits only to find you're no longer registered. Florida 2000.
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2 hour waits only to find you're no longer registered. Florida 2000.
Thing is, it's no longer 2000 and you can instantly check your registration status online [myflorida.com] by plugging in your first name, last name, and date of birth. I concede that would still require things like planning ahead, turning off the TV for a few minutes, and so on. The Supreme Court has been clear that people have a right to vote without substantial burden, not without any burden at all.
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Yep. A substantial burden like not having the resources to obtain your birth certificate.
Putting aside what "not having the resources" would literally have to mean and how hard it is to find actual people actually limited to that degree, your scenario I addressed was people standing in line on voting day only to find out they were no longer registered. Since they previously had been registered, by definition they already had gotten through any "life is hard" issues like that.
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Basic gov't-issued photo ID is free at every state DMV that I know of. How can anyone function in life without an ID anyway? It's a myth that there's a large population of legal citizens that don't have an ID.
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Basic gov't-issued photo ID is free at every state DMV that I know of.
Not Minnesota. You heed to have a qualified disability, verified by a medical professional:
“The fee for a Minnesota identification card is 50 cents for a person who is either: developmentally disabled as defined in Minnesota Statutes, section 252A.02; physically disabled as defined in Minnesota Statutes, section 169.345, subdivision 2; or has serious and persistent mental illness as described in Minnesota Statutes, section 245.462, subdivision 20, paragraph (c).”
source [mn.gov]
On your other two points
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I have no problem with the state providing a free basic ID to everyone.
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You must be one of them socialists!
Totally joking, I'm completely on-board with that idea. Unfortunately there are certain demographics that are worried about "illegals" coming here and getting IDs then stealing everybody's jobs and milking the system for free money.
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While *you* may claim that, *you* have provided no evidence.
Further, if anyone has voting high on their priority list but somehow couldn't get their shit together in time for the election they can cast a provisional ballot, get their shit together, and then have it counted.
Go back to *reddit* with your *markdown* trash.
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It's a myth that there's a large population of legal citizens that don't have an ID.
The myth is that it's legal citizens that the Democrats are protecting here. It's a lot more difficult to get that ID if you're here illegally, or if you're dead. It would be a horrible burden on e.g. Chicago machine politics - they'd have to get people into jobs in the DMV offices and everything!
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It's a well known open secret that liberals routinely bus "voters" around on election day thanks to the fact that all you need to vote is know the registered voter list.
What you describe is illegal. I must assume that at least a small percentage of these frauds are caught, so of course you can provide some documentation of convictions for this, right?
I should note that one of the first things DJT did after he became president is to start a committee to investigate voter fraud. It has been disbanded recently, and I am not aware of any reports from this committy. Why? I think I can make a pretty good guess.
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There's also a history of voter laws being used to block black people from voting [wikipedia.org]. But that was a long time ago and the parties have really mixed it up since then. I'm pretty sure there's plenty of idiots voting both ways, but in the same sense that ANY paperwork or regulation is viewed as harmful to business, people argue that ANY paperwork or registration is harmful to getting people to vote. And yeah, every election people are turned away in some states because they never registered, or failed to upda
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You were born yesterday. WBush DoJ pushed this issue. They found maybe a dozen instances in the entire US of A.
The are lots of red states with perfectly capable right-wing Attorney Generals that would love to find examples, because evidence would be valuable in the courtroom when justifying stringent voter ID laws. The reason the ACLU wins so many lawsuits is actual evidence is conspicuously lacking.
Fraudulent voting happens about as often as people die from lightning strikes. If that were not the case,
Re: wow digging (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't claim voter fraud is not rare when lacking a shred of evidence. It is simply dishonest. It is not my job to prove how rare unicorns are, but the person who says unicorns are everywhere. AGs have looked and looked and they cannot find more than a rare isolated example here and there.
For example, there is a consistent complaint that surely dead people are voting. Gee, it is the twentyeffinfirst century and it would be easy to detect that with computer technology if it were non-rare. No body looks into that because everyone with a brain knows the truth.
If you could figure out how to prove there was significant amount of voter fraud, there is a rightwing PAC out there who will write you a seven figure check for the evidence, I guarantee it. Put you money where you mouth is, and quick your day job for a year to serve American democracy. And get rich, too.
Re: wow digging (Score:5, Informative)
No, they don't. They verify that the name you gave them is a registered voter. And that's all they do
Actually, they verify name and address, and that you have not voted yet.
Btw, think voter ID is gonna fix it? Guess what you need to produce a fake id? Name and address.
It's a well known open secret that liberals routinely bus "voters" around on election day
If this was actually happening at a large scale, it would be easy to catch and result in a lot of convictions. Yet there have been 0 people caught transporting false voters.
In-person voter fraud is extremely rare. Those that do it and are caught are not all members of one political party. In fact, there's been slightly more Republicans caught doing it in the last few years, largely because of false claims like the one you make here.
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Btw, think voter ID is gonna fix it? Guess what you need to produce a fake id? Name and address.
Woldn't be a magic bullet, but it would still help. It would require election fraud to be better organized, farther ahead of time, and involve more people in the planning. Much bigger risk of getting caught.
In-person voter fraud is extremely rare.
You can't know that. All we know is how often people get caught - and they only ever get caught by the winning side. Chicago machine politics has been Chicago machine politics for far more than a century.
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You can't know that. All we know is how often people get caught - and they only ever get caught by the winning side. Chicago machine politics has been Chicago machine politics for far more than a century.
Because of statistics, we can assume that it is rare. Besides, most humans can't keep secret. If it has been there as such a large scale (big group of people involved in the fraud), it would have been out long ago. Thus, fraud of in-person voting is rare.
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Mostly voter ID seems to be a hot button issue for those who assume that there is rampant piecemeal voter fraud. Of which there is no substantive evidence of this happening. Wholesale voter fraud should be a much more serious concern.
Note that the arrival of busses is not evidence of voting fraud, it is a common occurence to bus in valid registered voters who don't drive and who otherwise wouldn't bother showing up. So a part of "get out the vote" by both parties includes offers to shuttle people over for
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I don't have time to look up the name
Translation: My google showed that he was transporting legal voters to the polls, so I need to keep it vague and sinister-sounding.
is they know about the voter fraud yet even the Republican establishment works to hide Democratic voter fraud
You realize that this statement is slightly less plausible than all the "crisis actor" claims anytime there is a shooting, right?
Republicans are literally changing laws to manipulate the ballot in North Carolina to favor their Supreme Court candidates, but they'd totally pass at an incredibly easy opportunity to annihilate the Democratic party.
You're getting played.
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People without addresses can get mail delivered to a nearby post office and held for them. It's called "general delivery". Ask your local postmaster about it. All you need is a zipcode.
You can do most things by mail. If you have no documentation, you just need a witness to vouch for you in front of a notary, court clerk, whatever. "This person is known to me." You can then start to bootstrap your life with a new SSN, new ID, etc.
No, it's not easy. No, it shouldn't be easy to establish someone as a ci
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It is well known that there are perfectly legal get out the vote efforts that certain people complain about because the voters are black. This is especially true in the rural South, of course.
Guess what? In the rural South, the voting booth is probably placed in a small rural town. But the voters who vote in that voting booth may be miles away down dirt roads. A black church takes it minvan and makes some trips, picking up 8-10 voters, often elderly who cannot drive themselves.
The local who lives in tow
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What law was broken?
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Voting equipment is already required to be certified by the states the buy/use them.
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The logical entity to take this on is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), formerly the Bureau of Standards.
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Yes, and that was done in 2002 with the Help America Vote Act.
https://www.nist.gov/itl/votin... [nist.gov]