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Electronic Voting: The Catastrophe That Wasn't
Business & Media Institute ^ | November 15, 2006 | Julia Seymour

Posted on 11/16/2006 11:40:41 AM PST by freemarket_kenshepherd

Like claims the U.S. was responsible for 9/11 and Republicans were fixing gas prices, the media promoted the left-wing electronic vote-rigging conspiracy.

Now that the votes have been cast and counted, Republicans lost, and the silence of the national media has been deafening.

The idea was that somehow the company Diebold had programmed the machines to let Republicans win. The theory, perpetuated by left-wingers posting on Daily Kos and The Huffington Post and Bev Harris’ book, “Black Box Voting,” was embraced by all three broadcast networks, as well as CNN and MSNBC.

Following Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) defeat in 2004, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann ignored statements by the candidate’s own Ohio attorney about the lack of evidence of “confirmed fraud.” Instead, Olbermann ranted for days about fraud causing the Kerry defeat during his show “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.”

Leading up to the 2006 election. Lou Dobbs and Kitty Pilgrim waged a five-month long, two-person war against electronic voting in regular “Democracy at Risk” segments during CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

Dobbs fostered mistrust of electronic voting throughout his broadcasts. “When it comes to the federal government, don’t expect much assurance that your electronic vote will be counted accurately. New standards for electronic voting machines may not be ready in fact, for years,” he warned on Oct. 29, 2006.

And on election day 2006, NBC’s Brian Williams said there were complaints of “plain old trickery at the polls.” As Williams tossed the story to reporter Chip Reid, the response came, “Well, most of it, Brian, is electronic voting.”

Ironically, electronic voting went national because of a bipartisan push for election reform after the disastrous 2000 Florida recount. But that bipartisan support for such voting machines turned into allegations and conspiracy theories after the 2004 elections.

(Excerpt) Read more at businessandmedia.org ...


TOPICS: Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: diebold; elections; liberalbias; voting
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1 posted on 11/16/2006 11:40:43 AM PST by freemarket_kenshepherd
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To: freemarket_kenshepherd
It's only a catastrophe when the GOP wins an election.

If the Democrats win, the election has been conducted with unimpeachable integrity.

2 posted on 11/16/2006 11:42:03 AM PST by wideawake ("The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten." - Calvin Coolidge)
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To: freemarket_kenshepherd
Since the Democrats won, there has been a large looming silence on the voter fraud front.

Carolyn

3 posted on 11/16/2006 11:42:20 AM PST by CDHart ("It's too late to work within the system and too early to shoot the b@#$%^&s."--Claire Wolfe)
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To: freemarket_kenshepherd

If someone did doubt the outcome of an election, how do you do a recount with a Diebold machine?


4 posted on 11/16/2006 11:48:27 AM PST by marron
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To: marron

How do you do a recount with the old-fashioned lever style machines with curtains?


5 posted on 11/16/2006 12:00:56 PM PST by Sgt_Schultze
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To: wideawake

That about sums it up... Expect Gore style elections every time a Republican wins and perfectly run elections every time a DumocRAT is elected.

The MSM media must be pretty happy with themselves. They managed to convince several lunatic left-wing DumocRATs who would normally spend election night doing something else other than voting, to go vote.

Hopefully, after a couple of years of the Nancy and Dirty Harry show the Republicans who didn't bother voting (i.e. the 60+ million who voted for Bush), will wake up and go to the polls again.


6 posted on 11/16/2006 12:04:16 PM PST by jerod
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To: marron

GOP data mining. Any in question are GOP. Simple.


7 posted on 11/16/2006 12:08:16 PM PST by showme_the_Glory (No more rhyming, and I mean it! ..Anybody want a peanut.....)
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To: marron

You dump the touchscreen data.


8 posted on 11/16/2006 12:09:32 PM PST by wideawake ("The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten." - Calvin Coolidge)
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To: freemarket_kenshepherd

Despite what a lot of ignorant left-wingers (and the linked article) are claiming, the problem is not that "Diebold programmed their machines to let Democrats win." That's foolish. The problem is that both Diebold's software and hardware are so insecure, a single malicious voter (or small group of such voters) regardless of their party affiliation could have a huge effect on the outcome of the election.

We should *all* be concerned about this.


9 posted on 11/16/2006 12:47:40 PM PST by orzechowskid
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To: freemarket_kenshepherd

It's only cheating when the Left loses.


10 posted on 11/16/2006 1:35:34 PM PST by Personal Responsibility (Amnesia is a train of thought.)
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To: marron
If someone did doubt the outcome of an election, how do you do a recount with a Diebold machine?

Very easily and more accurately than you could have with punch cards.

The diebold machines we use here allow you to vote on the touch screen. When you have finished making your selections, you press the button to print the paper copy. The paper copy is printed on a roll that remains in the machine. You get to view it through a window and verify a page at a time that what is recorded matches how you voted. You can reject the ballot if you find a mistake and go back and make changes.

Once you have confirmed the entire ballot, the paper advances to a empty portion so that the next voter cannot see how you voted.

Between the paper ballots, the electronic counts, and the sign-in book, they are able to do through canvasing to detect attempts at fraud.

Despite all the empty claims otherwise, it's a far more reliable and secure system than was used in the past.

11 posted on 11/16/2006 1:49:59 PM PST by untrained skeptic
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To: freemarket_kenshepherd
Gotta love their brazenness don't ya? Had the rats lost, there would be talk still about how the voting was rigged, etc. etc. Since they won, it all went perfectly.
12 posted on 11/16/2006 1:52:04 PM PST by ladyinred (RIP my precious Lamb Chop)
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To: untrained skeptic

Thank you. If there is a hard copy that the voter can verify, then I'm not worried.


13 posted on 11/16/2006 2:07:57 PM PST by marron
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To: untrained skeptic; marron
The paper copy...

You're lucky. Our electronic machines had no such thing. In our precinct, a recount would have been 100% impossible.
14 posted on 11/16/2006 2:18:15 PM PST by Pirate21 (The liberal media are as sheep clearing the path along which they will be led to the slaughter.)
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To: freemarket_kenshepherd

This is easy to figure out - Pelosi said it herself, "We win or they cheated".


15 posted on 11/16/2006 7:29:29 PM PST by CyberAnt (Drive-By Media: Fake news, fake documents, fake polls)
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To: Pirate21; marron
Yea, the Evil Ken Blackwell who according to the democrats was working with Diebold to steal elections negotiated a very good deal with Diebold to get voting machines with the printer option included.

Without the printer, they can still verify that the votes on the individual machines total up to match the totals in the database, and that no one somehow messed with the database.

They can also verify the count of the number of people who signed in and match that to the counts of the voters who voted on the machines.

In my opinion that's just as reliable as the punch cards, which could easily be modified or invalidated even by unintentional mishandling.

However, I think the touch screen system we have now with the paper ballot is considerably better system than we had in the past, despite all they hype we have heard.

If can and still should be made better, but it's better than what we had in the past already.

Here's some links about the diebold machines we have here. We've had these where I vote since the primary election this spring. Other precincts that purchased machines earlier may not have the printers yet but it's my understanding that they can be added on to those machines as well.

http://www6.diebold.com/whatsnews/pr/photo/accuview.htm

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/News/Read.aspx?ID=118

16 posted on 11/17/2006 6:03:21 AM PST by untrained skeptic
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Comment #17 Removed by Moderator

Comment #18 Removed by Moderator

To: orzechowskid
The problem is that both Diebold's software and hardware are so insecure, a single malicious voter (or small group of such voters) regardless of their party affiliation could have a huge effect on the outcome of the election.

The single malicious voter would have to do it precinct by precinct, otherwise the impact would not be significant.

19 posted on 11/17/2006 7:20:50 AM PST by kabar
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Comment #20 Removed by Moderator


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