Florida fraud again???

[Colleen Thomas]

Thanks Colly,

I understand that we vote for the electors that vote in the Electoral College but if the link below is correct then this election was as bogus as the last one.

Weird Harold's link below is just scary.

http://www.votersunite.org/election...&showall=&sort=

I haven't seen anything, anywhere online that shows fraud of any magnitude with any degree of objectivity. Likemost conspiracy theories, you get a ton of "facts' most colored wholly or partially in opinion and a convoluted orwellian group that engineered it.

The postulation that diebold machines were rigged is just that, a theory. I haven't seen convincing proof that it is even a theory that I should give consideration to. Does that mean it isn't true? Not by a long shot. But it's going to take something substanative to make me give it even the creedence neccessary to consider it.

The exit polls were mishandled, by the admission of the polling groups. Democratic majority counties that have for years consistantly voted republican would only be an issue if they voted democrat suddenly. The one machine Harold mentions that gave everybody extra votes is consistantly cited, ignoring it gave Kerry more votes too, that kind of half reporting makes me suspicious of the motives of those reporting it.

I'm a natural skeptic. If they are going to try and convince me I should be in a lather over massive voter fraud, they had better be prepared to show me some indisputable evidence. Thus far I have seen suspicions, half truths, and citing of facts in a way to give an impression that is not consistant with the impression I get after finding all the facts involved.

I'll leave you with this thought. A conspiracy of the magnitude they calim would involve literally hundereds if not thousands of people and cover ups at the highest levels of government. What has Bush done in his first term that would convince you he is capable of organizing such an operation and having it go off so smoothly that not a shred of solid evidence exists he did it?

-Colly

 

[cantdog]

Colly, not to be contentious, but you are raising a straw man with that line of argument.

You are assuming or postulating a structure of nationally organized, top-down, directed effort. That's the straw man, because it is clearly utterly unlikely. It is also utterly unnecessary in order to produce the results being mentioned.

I agree, all reports of the phenomena are being filtered through the biases of the reporter. This is politically charged phenomena in a politically contentious environment, so the effect is quite intense. That is a somewhat smaller straw man. Because in fact, given the polarization of the politics here, you are simply not going to see any reports which are unbiased.

The thing to do is to realize that the reports are going to be partisan. The bias at one site, for instance, answered some preference in Weird Harold's head better than other sites, so he recommended it, but bias is still there. You can use reports from biased sources if the reporters are going to be honest with the numbers, and then interpret those numbers in the light of your own reason, as you are doing with the Dixiecrat county you have referred to.

I prefer that the Diebold no-lookie machines be subject to a printed receipt trail, so that, when the immemorial practice of fraud in vote reports takes place, they have to do something physical with the papers, as they have always done.

Look at the votergate.org film clip, really. It is breathtakingly easy to change the count. It generates plain old database files, that software. They aren't even encrypted, for chrissakes.

You can start the vote-tab program and read the numbers. You can also open the *.dbf files in any generic database program and simply edit the numbers, tracelessly, except for the date stamp on the *.dbf file. That requires a little sophistication (not much) to fix, true.

But even if there is a date-stamp difference so you know someone edited the numbers, the fact is, now no one can ever know what the original numbers might have been. Fail safe it aint, man. This is a gaping hole in the security of the thing, all by itself.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colly, not to be contentious, but you are raising a straw man with that line of argument.

You are assuming or postulating a structure of nationally organized, top-down, directed effort. That's the straw man, because it is clearly utterly unlikely. It is also utterly unnecessary in order to produce the results being mentioned.

I agree, all reports of the phenomena are being filtered through the biases of the reporter. This is politically charged phenomena in a politically contentious environment, so the effect is quite intense. That is a somewhat smaller straw man. Because in fact, given the polarization of the politics here, you are simply not going to see any reports which are unbiased.

The thing to do is to realize that the reports are going to be partisan. The bias at one site, for instance, answered some preference in Weird Harold's head better than other sites, so he recommended it, but bias is still there. You can use reports from biased sources if the reporters are going to be honest with the numbers, and then interpret those numbers in the light of your own reason, as you are doing with the Dixiecrat county you have referred to.

I prefer that the Diebold no-lookie machines be subject to a printed receipt trail, so that, when the immemorial practice of fraud in vote reports takes place, they have to do something physical with the papers, as they have always done.

Look at the votergate.org film clip, really. It is breathtakingly easy to change the count. It generates plain old database files, that software. They aren't even encrypted, for chrissakes.

You can start the vote-tab program and read the numbers. You can also open the *.dbf files in any generic database program and simply edit the numbers, tracelessly, except for the date stamp on the *.dbf file. That requires a little sophistication (not much) to fix, true.

But even if there is a date-stamp difference so you know someone edited the numbers, the fact is, now no one can ever know what the original numbers might have been. Fail safe it aint, man. This is a gaping hole in the security of the thing, all by itself.

I'm a computer blonde, so any arguments about the ability of someone to change results is over my head. Still, you are talking about a conspiracy to do so. When you are making that charge, and it is being made, you need some facts that stand alone. I haven't seen any. Not one. Everything I have seen is speculative and "possible". It's possible when I flipped the switchon the voting machine for bednarick I actually voted for Kerry. Possible, but not probable.

As I said, I am not saying it didn't happen, I am simply saying there will ahve to be some substantive proof out there before I will give it any creedence.

I don't believe aliens landed at roswell and I have seen a lot more proof of that than I have for voter fraud.

-Colly

 

[Guest]

No?

http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/alien/smilieufo.gif

 

[Colleen Thomas]

No?

http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/alien/smilieufo.gif

Rofl

 

[Weird Harold]

Weird Harold's link below is just scary.

Not if you actually read the articles they link to with an open mind.

That link, and the articles they link to, clearly show that even the worst cases of "machine malfunctions" affected less than 1% of the vote and in most cases only delayed the vote counting.

The biggest problem with the Election that link reveals is the clasification "Registration Fraud" -- it's clear that American voters simply don't know how to register to vote and are too trusting of unscrupulous unofficial voter registration drives.

If people cared about their vote, they'd get registerd through official channels and pay some attention to Election Board issues before the last week or month before Election Day.

Voters in Broward and Volusia Counties in Florida deserve every problem they encoutered Nov 2nd -- Most of them were unsolved problems from 2000 and 2002! But the voters didn't get outraged and make their displeasure over past problems known and insist that real solutions be found.

New Orleans had some serious organizational problems that should have been identified and corrected long before Election Day.

In a few places, like Broward and Volusia Counties and in New Orleans, and some sacttered other cases the Local Election Boards screwed things up with poor planning and/or training.

But on the whole, what is NOT on the list of "problems" that votersunite.org is collecting is more important than what IS on the list.

Votersunite has collected 287 reports of problems affecting about 100,000 from a Election that involved over 115 MILLION votes. The 287 reports include nearly 200 cases of problems that occured and were corrected BEFORE the Election.

When an organization that is actively seeking out problems with the Election can find less than 100 documented problems from an Election on this scale, I have to believe that the Election was generally well run and reliable.

Susan Sarandon's paranoid assertions aside, the documented problems with E-Voting reported to date generally have nothing to do with ESS or Diebold manufactured systems. The pattern of documented problems indicates that human error and not malice are the root causes.

Cantdog:
The bias at one site, for instance, answered some preference in Weird Harold's head better than other sites, so he recommended it, but bias is still there.

Actually I recommended that site because they link the full stories of the "problems" instead of making unsupported accusations. I don't believe that the stories linked support the classifications they assign to many of those problems in most cases.

Of course they're biased and biased in a direction I don't agree with in most cases, but at leas tthe provide some independent documentation of the problems they're reporting so I can research them and draw my own conclusions.

Cantdog:
I prefer that the Diebold no-lookie machines be subject to a printed receipt trail, so that, when the immemorial practice of fraud in vote reports takes place, they have to do something physical with the papers, as they have always done.

Do the machines YOU voted on have paper-trails? If not, did you do anything to try to get your local Election Board to spend the bucks to get them?

All of the E-Voting machines have the capability for the kind of paper-trail ALL of the E-voting machines in Nevada have. Where there is no paper-trail, it's because the Voters in that area didn't get involved and demand their Election boards worry more about accountability than pennies.

As I said above, the voters in Broward and Volusia counties in Florida deserve every problem they encountered -- including the lack of paper-trails -- because those problems were identified two years ago and the voters didn't care enough to force a real solution to the issues raised in 2002.

 

[shereads]

As I understand it, John Conyers and about a half dozen other congresspersons are calling for the investigation. It is strange to me that it is drawing so little coverage.

I don't find it strange at all, because I know the "liberal media" exists at the journalist level, not the corporate one. On election day, I noticed that our local stations were bubbling over with praise for how well "the system" worked. It was like listening to the local booster club cheerleading for some community fund drive. On NBC the frequent comments about how smoothly the voting was going seemed at odds with this story, mentioned as if it were a minor thing among the many calls to their voter hotline: a woman in Florida reported that the voting machine crashed when she pressed 'vote.' She reported it to pollworkers who said there was no way to know whether her vote had registered or not, so of course they couldn't let her try again. That's an improvement over paper ballots?

Like the Iraq invasion, once the deed is done it can't be undone, no matter what might turn up in a congressional investigation. The party in power isn't likely to show any more interest in voting irregularities than the Justice Department is showing in the outing of CIA agent Plame.

As my grandmother would have said, "The fox is in charge of guarding the hen house."

 

[shereads]

I'm a computer blonde, so any arguments about the ability of someone to change results is over my head. Still, you are talking about a conspiracy to do so. When you are making that charge, and it is being made, you need some facts that stand alone. I haven't seen any. Not one. Everything I have seen is speculative and "possible". It's possible when I flipped the switchon the voting machine for bednarick I actually voted for Kerry. Possible, but not probable.

As I said, I am not saying it didn't happen, I am simply saying there will ahve to be some substantive proof out there before I will give it any creedence.

I don't believe aliens landed at roswell and I have seen a lot more proof of that than I have for voter fraud.

-Colly

That's the beauty of the paperless system! There's no proof of anything, and there never will be. Think how much time and money we've saved by eliminating in advance the possibility of a disputed count.

If there had been any interest in fairness, Diebold would have been eliminated as a contender to supply Florida voting machines from the outset, because of the apparent conflict of interest presented by its president's vocal support of GWB. When the selection of Diebold and the "paperless" design of the system became public knowledge, the outcry was brushed off with claims that it was too late to add the capacity for a paper trail. For weeks, the newspapers were filled with protests. No response. We might as well have been talking to GWB's brother...Oops. We were!

 

[shereads]

Do the machines YOU voted on have paper-trails? If not, did you do anything to try to get your local Election Board to spend the bucks to get them?

We raised holy hell in Florida and were ignored. If it was a stolen election, it was a bold stroke and a brilliant one and no one will ever prove a thing.

 

[cantdog]

The biggest problem with the Election that link reveals is the clasification "Registration Fraud" -- it's clear that American voters simply don't know how to register to vote and are too trusting of unscrupulous unofficial voter registration drives.

If people cared about their vote, they'd get registerd through official channels and pay some attention to Election Board issues before the last week or month before Election Day.

Voters in Broward and Volusia Counties in Florida deserve every problem they encoutered Nov 2nd -- Most of them were unsolved problems from 2000 and 2002! But the voters didn't get outraged and make their displeasure over past problems known and insist that real solutions be found.

New Orleans had some serious organizational problems that should have been identified and corrected long before Election Day.

In a few places, like Broward and Volusia Counties and in New Orleans, and some sacttered other cases the Local Election Boards screwed things up with poor planning and/or training.

But on the whole, what is NOT on the list of "problems" that votersunite.org is collecting is more important than what IS on the list.

Votersunite has collected 287 reports of problems affecting about 100,000 from a Election that involved over 115 MILLION votes. The 287 reports include nearly 200 cases of problems that occured and were corrected BEFORE the Election.

When an organization that is actively seeking out problems with the Election can find less than 100 documented problems from an Election on this scale, I have to believe that the Election was generally well run and reliable.


Do the machines YOU voted on have paper-trails? If not, did you do anything to try to get your local Election Board to spend the bucks to get them?

Registration fraud:

New Democratic voter registrations were up 250% in Ohio. Democrats throughout the "Buckeye State" were prepared to turn out in record numbers to demand change on November 2nd in federal, state and local elections.

With only 6 days left before the voter registration deadline, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was trying to bar thousands of newly registered voters from the polls.

Citing an arcane ruling requiring voter registration cards be printed on 80 pound paper stock, Blackwell was threatening to void registrations submitted on any other paper, demanding these registrants re-apply. But there was no time to reapply which would leave thousands of new voters off the rolls.

Tens of thousands of Ohioans have registered online or with registration forms printed in newspapers, copied by friends, community activists, and even state offices. These were valid applications.

In June, ACT warned Blackwell that they were watching his close ties with Diebold, the leading manufacturer of flawed electronic voting machines. By July, with over 50,000 signatures on our petition, the use of these machines had been dramatically curtailed by local elections officials. Therefore Blackwell dumped tens of thousands of new registrations. Guess what party Mr. Blackwell is in?


My voting machines are a piece of card stock. I mark on a piece of paper, Weird. An optical scanner decides if I have connected the left and right sides of an arrow with a magic marker thing.
The paper ballot is there, still, in a locked box. In case of a recount, they use humans to decide if I completed the arrow.

I don't see how anyone can seriously advocate the use of the paperless machines. What is the virtue of them?

 

[Weird Harold]

I don't see how anyone can seriously advocate the use of the paperless machines. What is the virtue of them?

They count votes fast and remove human error from the counting.

And they cost less and have fewer things to brekdown without the printers.

The Touch-screen e-voting systems are a response to the known problems inherent with the optical reader systems you used -- the ballots have to be precisely printed and precisely marked before the machine can count the votes properly.

The Optical reader systems were designed and purchased as a response to the slow, jam-prone punch-card systems

The Punch Card systems were a respose to the long counting times the lever type voting machines introduced in the late 1800s and used for a century or so and human error in the trascription and tabulation from individual machines to a precinct total and then again combining precints into county totals and county totals into state totals.

Each generation of "improvement" in voting technology is aimed at removing the "human element" and "Mechanical Failure" elements while simultaneously speeding up the vote counting process.

When properly maintained, calibrated and used, paperless electronic voting is the fastest and most accurate method of voting we've come up with yet.

But with every new technology, comes new problems to solve and new ways for errors in the count to happen -- or be deliberately introduced.

Florida's refusal to spend the money to add printers to their machines displays an unaccepatble technophilic optimism IMHO, rather than deliberate malice -- at the very least it shows a serious lack of responsiveness to voter concerns.

The qualifier I added above -- when properly maintained, calibrated and used -- is a key point. I've spent too many years repairing systems that weren't doing what they were designed to do and had to reboot my PC far too may times to trust my life to purely electronic control systems or my vote to just a magnetic charge in a black box.

But then I'm not a technophilic politician looking to technology to erase the world-wide stigma of a botched Election either.

Broward and Volusia counties demonstrated that new technology isn't the answer to problems that go much deeper than the technology used to collect and tabulate votes quickly and accurately. The new technology just compounded organization and training failures that were at the heart of problems in 2000 and 2004 in some places. The failure to provide a hard-copy back-up cost Election Officials much more in the loss of public confidence and world-wide embarassment -- again -- than the few million dollars they save the tax-payers.

Many, Many stories of doom and gloom prdictions about Diebold were around before the Election. Perhaps because of the publicity and decertification of Diebold Equipment in some places, the post-election problems almost never mention Diebold voting machines -- except were last minute decertifiction of Diebold machines introduced problems because of inadequate and/or un-practiced back-up procedures.

 

[shereads]

I'm a natural skeptic. If they are going to try and convince me I should be in a lather over massive voter fraud, they had better be prepared to show me some indisputable evidence. Thus far I have seen suspicions, half truths, and citing of facts in a way to give an impression that is not consistant with the impression I get after finding all the facts involved.

I'll leave you with this thought. A conspiracy of the magnitude they calim would involve literally hundereds if not thousands of people and cover ups at the highest levels of government. What has Bush done in his first term that would convince you he is capable of organizing such an operation and having it go off so smoothly that not a shred of solid evidence exists he did it?

-Colly

I'm a skeptic whose vote was stolen four years ago and who witnessed the battle in Florida to stop the use of Diebold paperless machines. I'll leave you with this thought: a conspiracy involving the programming of some computers and the purchase of those machines for use by a few key states wouldn't need hundreds of thousands of people. It would need a programmer whose loyalty was unquestioned, and a purchasing decision of the kind that usually takes place in government: the persons in charge of the decision are directed by someone beholden to the supplier.


Edited to add: How hard is it to accomplish a massive fraud? Well, how hard was it to convince half of this country and all of the congress that there was proof of an imminent threat sufficient to justify a full-scale invasion of another country, largely based on evidence provided by a convicted con artist with an obvious agenda?