Are we going to lay back and take election fraud AGAIN?
54Election Fraud
diebold
Here is some common sense
"To err is human, to multiply huge errors REALLY FAST requires a computer."
The WWW is rife with stories alleging fraud with voting machines in an election or two past. All you have to do is google "Diebold Election Fraud" or something like that, and dozens of them will come up.
Some focus on bona fide software errors, such as dropping certain numbers of votes under certain circumstances. Some suggest more sinister scenarios, for example that Diebold (the primary supplier of electronic voting machines as well as a company with known rightish leanings) may have had its own interest in the results of the election. The scary thing is our complacency and level of trust in these guys results.
Here's the deal people: In most precincts elections are won by a few percentage points. So it only takes a few votes counted twice or failed to be counted one way or another for the election to be tipped. Nobody wants to manually count votes. So we're happy to put our faith in the machines -- made by a right leaning company, and also we're perfectly fine with letting them tabulate the data.
Excuse me, but isn't that a bit like letting the fox guard the henhouse? These machines need to be spot checked for consistency. The numbers should be run through a totally disinterested third party, (whoever that might be). And I believe that for something like votes, we should have the data be represented in some system that humans can read without any machinery.
Does it bother anyone else, that, for the first time in US history, exit polls results were way inconsistent with election returns?
I'm not saying I know exactly how many votes went astray. I'm only saying I know that people make big snafu's all the time that are only caught when the results are outrageous. Maybe 100% to zero% would raise the red flag, but that's not what happens.
We're all quite familiar with the good looking and charismatic senator from Illinois. We're all a little less familiar with his rather more elderly opponent but at least we probably know his name. But your vote for either of these chappies may be not even worth the bundle of magnetic domains it's stored on. We need to be familiar with the name of Ellen Thiesen, a software writer who is disturbed by the potential for error, malfunction and fraud. Please see her votersunite website as well as blackboxvoting.org
Get the PDF for how you can be active locally. Until the year 2000 I had always thought the people's will had been expressed through the elections, yes even the ones where that B-movie actor won. Now I'm pretty sure that the whole system is boggled down in a big ball of red tape, as only government run things can be. Errors would probably be someone random. The possibility exists for a lot of tampering too, widespread and systematic.
We are not alone
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Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, an American Political Tradition-1742-2004
Price: $9.56
List Price: $16.95 |
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Invisible Ballots: A Temptation for Electronic Vote Fraud
Price: $19.84
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Comments
Hot Dorkage, how do we know it's a "right-leaning company"? What does that mean exactly?
The US system is patchy. For example in Oregon where I live we vote everything by mail, It is very convenient, but I think in households one member may tell the other one how to vote and watch them do it, or people can just send in other people's ballots. We black in a little circle which is later scanned by a machine. In other states there are voting machines that still have the manual markers, and I am told that in some states it is all gone completely software.
As a security analyst I just know that all these systems are holey as hell. I was cursed with a larcenous brain, every time I see a lock or a security system I have to think about how to hack it. I just cant help it. That's why I worked in security for a while.
Aya Katz, a right-leaning company is a corporation that has gone on record as making campaign contributions on behalf of the company to the conservative or right party. Manyt big businesses are right-leaning because the right side favors their interests over for example the interests of USA population in general, especially is heedless of the interests of poor and disenfranchised people.
HD - thanks for the explanation. I must say, I'm pretty apalled that different systems apply in different States. How can that be democratic?
Paraglider, I'm guessing somebody took a rubber stamp and stamped "THIS IS USA CERTIFIED DEMORATIC" on all the different systems in red white and blue official ink, surely so they must all be democratic and immune from any type of hacking. People with official rubber stamps never lie.
Interesting Hub, but very depressing. Sadly, election fraud is not confined to the USA.
2patricias, no it's certainly not. when I lived in Ireland I voted even though I don't have Irish citizenship. It was just to prove that it could be done, and quite easily. In the USA we are taught in school that our system of "checks and balances" assures that each vote counts and that there are measures in place to prevent fraud and our system is fair, that only in "those other countries" do such things happen.
Excellent and timely hub! You bring up important questions. It is incredible the battles, threats, lawsuits, psychological warfare, people like independent investigative Bev Harris had to go through because the mainstream media was utterly failing at its job to bring up such vital issue as electronic attacks against US democracy. Apparent alterations of election results via electronic voting machines that invisibly change election results have already occurred as indicated by statistically impossible outcomes. More hubs such as yours need to be created to bring attention to an issue suppressed and censored by the corporate media.
well I must say I am more interested in the results of this election than I ever was before. Obama has a pretty commanding lead in the polls, and at this point, if McCain had a deal breaker up his sleeve to drop on us, I think he would have done it by now. Or maybe he is calculating on the internet spreading rumors at lightening speed and he is biding his time until Sunday or Monday. But a lot of folks have already voted. I was extremely protective of my mail-in ballot. I did not trust the postman to deliver it (I don't know him, and tho I don't have an Obama sign in front of my house, our neighborhood is likely Obama.) I also had heard of gangs of young conservatives going around stealing ballots from unlocked mailboxes in "Obama hoods." They justify it by saying we are infested with the sin of "liberalism" (gee would that be THINKING?) and don't know what we are voting for and they're doing it for the love of their country. Basically in my life I have found out one thing: If everybody is buzzing about something, it's probably some hyped up media spin thing that benefits someone who is already rich. If you speak the truth, you have a heck of a time competing because the truth usually isn't sexy.
I'm working on my own hub about this, so I'm glad I found yours. Every election they say it's too late to fix the problem. Yet, as soon as the election is over, nobody mentions the machines again until just before the next election when it's "too late" again.
Paraglider says:
16 months ago
I don't know the US system. Is there a physical ballot paper dropped into a sealed box _as well as_ the machine (so that disputed results could be back-checked) or has the whole thing gone software?