The Business of Voting

New York times ^ | 12/18/05 | New York times editorial

[salbam]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/opinion/18sun2.html

[salbam]

The New York times Editorial today webs weaves the usual paranoid conspiracy theories about the Diebold voting machines because (horror!) some executives donated to Republican candidates. They imply the company may be rigging elections for republicans and demand the computers give a paper trail to confirm the votes are accurately tabulated. As anyone in the computer world know, "garbage in, garbage out" - would it also be prudent to have a paper trail on those actually casting the ballots to ensure they are indeed registered voters? They are thousands upon thousands of documented cases of voter fraud (involving millions of votes) that requiring an ID would eliminate, and there is NOT ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of voter fraud from rigged computers, but the times is more worried about the computers. Why? Oh yeah - I forgot - because it is racist to ask for an ID to vote (just curious - are the airlines racist when they ask for ID multiple times when you fly?)

[new yorker 77]

I did an analysis of state by state, election 2000 versus election 2004 voting.

I will clean it up an post it here for all to see.

FYI: Bush had a net gain of 850,000, Election 2004 versus Election 2000, in the Northeastern states that Kerry won.

Bush had Net Gains in 39 States.

The Democrat, Kerry, had net gains in 10 states.

The state of Nevada was negligible.

[John Jorsett]

I don't have a problem with a paper output from voting machines. I don't want manipulation from any source, and an auditable paper trail would aid in reducing opportunities for fraud. We had a real fiasco here in San Diego with the Diebold machines, and it showed me how easy it would be to rig an election with some of these machines. I don't subscribe to any of the black helicopter theories about Diebold purposely steering votes to the Republicans. I think incompetence, corruption, and stupidity is more than enough to explain how lousy their machines are.


I'm also in favor of requiring ID to vote. The opponents of that are either demagogues or people who want to keep some fraudulent scheme going.

[salbam]

I have NO PROBLEM with getting a "receipt" from the machine, but to imply as the New York times does that the real threat to the integrity of our elections is the machines and not fake voters is quites simply not true.

[John Jorsett]

I have NO PROBLEM with getting a "receipt" from the machine

You probably already know this, but just to be clear to anyone else reading this, the proposal is not for a "receipt" in the commonly-understood sense. It's for a paper printout that would be retained by the polling station, and that would be the record consulted if there's a dispute. You don't want to hand anything to the voter because it could be used as proof to someone buying that person's vote.

[upchuck]

Tag.

[upchuck]

Excellent (and scary) article on the innards of a Diebold voting machine.

[Galveston Grl]

I went into the way back memory machine and discovered it was the MEDIA that demanded the Federal government pay lots of money to update voting systems with computerized systems so that we would never have to suffer Mr. Chad stealing elections from the Media Party again. The Media Activist demandments were hysterical in the name of the disenfranchied Media Party voters throughout the land.

Anyone recall this?

[Galveston Grl]

The media is upset because their dead voters have not figured out how to manipulate the machines yet.

[EGPWS]

The New York times Editorial today webs weaves the usual paranoid conspiracy theories about the Diebold voting machines because (horror!) some executives donated to Republican candidates.

He's p!ssed because he feels that Republicans could actually play the liberal game of deceit and win it and paranoid in the fact that the lib's could have been trumped at their own game.

[EGPWS]

Anyone recall this?

Vividly.

[EGPWS]

The media is upset because their dead voters have not figured out how to manipulate the machines yet.

They are actively working on promoting a system to resolve this injustice placed upon the dead no doubt.