This is reverse or sideways or something of legislators who go to work for the companies for which they voted lucrative government contracts. Here they’re overseeing elections of people who just happen to have the ability to grant lucrative contracts to their former employers. Not that I’m implying they would help that along, of course. The shoddy election machine software and hardware already enable that. Not that I’m implying these machines were designed to rig elections, of course.
Voting Machine Company Salesman Becomes Election Director in Texas
A former software sales manager for Election Systems & Software, the largest voting machine company in the country, has been named county elections administrator for Fort Bend County in Texas.
According to a local news report, John Oldham had been regional sales manager, account manager and Illinois state manager for ES&S, which is based in Nebraska.
[…]
Oldham is replacing the previous elections director, J.R. Perez, who abruptly resigned in March after clashing with county commissioners over the Hart InterCivic machines. According to the news report, Perez had wanted to get rid of the $4 million Hart machines in favor of machines that would produce a paper trail.
[…]A former sales rep for Diebold Election Systems (now Premier Election Solutions) is now the registrar of voters in San Diego, California.
I don’t tend towards conspiracy theories but…
this is SUCH an easy problem to solve that it makes me suspicious that they just don’t do it.
Here is the one that makes sense: a ballot MARKING machine.
You get the benefits of a machine but the paper trail of a physical, human readable ballot.
http://tinyurl.com/6ptuce
Everyone knows that Bush stole the election in 2000, by turning away voters in Florida. I don’t know why he didn’t get caught as openly for rigging machines in Ohio in 2004.
It’s those bible thumping, wide-stancing, closet gay republicans that are at the heart of this.
Just wanted to quickly get religion into this thread!
I doubt the GOP will tamper with the election tabulating tools. It is too closely monitored now.
Note, RUMORS are circulating that the EU and other free nations plans to station military personal at voting booths to ensure free American elections.
SMART !
The GOP has a much better strategy to tamper with elections – it’s called REDISTRICTING. That is, redistrict large areas of democratic voters and dilute them with neighboring republipuke areas. Those ate clever MF’s aren’t they?
>>Just wanted to quickly get religion into this thread!
Good one, Mssr. K. You truly are a fierce warrior in the battle to enforce Dvorak’s Law!
Lookie here, Bosco; you don’t buy our voting machines, I’ll see to it that you don’t have a house to come home to. Know what I mean?
The only recent proven major election fraud was 2004 election of certain Democratic Governor who refused to stand down despite significantly more votes than live voters in the key district…
Here’s a thought on how to get electronic voting machines to report the proper numbers.
First, each voter is given a unique voter number, randomly generated when they enter the voting booth. They then cast their ballots.
All of these votes are then culled and placed into a spreadsheet generated exclusively for that polling station which is uploaded to an on-line, publicly viewable, 100% transparent .gov site that provides a view not only of the individual votes, but all votes cast on all ballots.
Votes can then be tabulated from these on-line spreadsheets, as well as be double checked by the individuals themselves, the media, and anyone else that wants to take the time to tabulate the votes themselves. That way, you can double check to see that if you voted for Judge A on your local ballot, that, in fact, your vote didn’t go to Judge B.
Granted, there are still flaws in this type of a system, people can “game” the system by including extra voters that never voted, but hey, that happens even now. At least this way the votes don’t go down some rathole, only to leave you hoping that who you think you voted for actually got credit for your vote.
Not to mention the utter simplicity of programming design needed to develop such a system.
We need transparency in the system, and the current electronic balloting system provides anything but transparency.
>> 3 Mister Ketchup
>> Just wanted to quickly get religion into this thread!
Post #3, in this case.
For an election to be trustworthy, it needs to be simple and transparent.
Simplicity creates robustness and resistance to tampering.
Transparency creates confidence.
So, human readable paper ballots seems like the ticket.
There can be a machine that _prints_ the paper ballot but the paper, not the machine is the actual vote.
That way, people can visually double-check their ballot and physically put it in a box.
That’s what people want and need.
#7, of course that’s the case. Other than the actual number of votes cast, what sort of recourse is there to verify the number of votes cast one way or another by individuals? What way is there to verify that if everyone in the district voted for Judge A and no one voted for Judge B, that Judge B won’t get any votes?
@Eric
We have these new things called databases. They are so much easier to use when the number of records you are trying to work with are in the 10s of millions. You have been living under the thumb of Microsoft Office to long my friend.
>>We have these new things called databases. You
>>have been living under the thumb of Microsoft Office
>>to long my friend.
Databases are not the issue. The issue is that the memory cards are hacked, the machines are hacked (heck, even the database might be hacked).
If there’s no paper trail, we just have rely on the honesty and technical acumen of Cheney/Diebold and the rest.
Now THAT is a stupid idea.
“It doesn’t matter how the people vote, it only matters WHO COUNTS THE VOTES” – “Decider” George W. Bush – the UNELECTED !!! (by way of Josef Stalin !!!)
Yeah considering the complete fraudulent fuck up the 2000 election was in Florida using extremely old technology, they think electronic voting is worse? Wait till we start voting via the internet! Russian Hax0rs will ruin the election!
@Improbus
That is why the databases in my proposal are broken down into individual voting districts. I do have a slightly more than vague understanding of how to do this sort of thing, sir.
The key is 100% complete transparency, and until individuals can go online and double check their votes, as well as anyone else’s, there will continue to be an air of mystery and conspiracy to the existence of electronic voting.
Try checking out the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy” some time. It might open your eyes to how electronic votes and the lack of paper trails they leave are treated.
Or go here http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ if you want to find out what’s the latest in electronic voting fraud.
Actually, there was nothing wrong with punch cards. Anyone with the intelligence of a toad could use them properly. Unfortunately, it appears that a number of Florida voters are not up to that standard.
Here in Los Angeles County, they just replaced the punch cards with “ink a vote” cards that use an ink dot and are optically scanned. Each ballot is run through a scanner atop the ballot box that checks for incomplete dots and things like voting for more than one candidate or yes AND no on the same proposition. Such ballots are rejected, voided, and the voter gets a new blank card to try again.
>>Anyone with the intelligence of a toad could
>>use them properly. Unfortunately, it appears
>>that a number of Florida voters are not up to
>>that standard.
Hey hey! I know plenty of people from Florida, and I’ve seen the “butterfly ballots” that they used.
They were fucked up. Whoever designed them should be doing some jail time now.
The bigger problem was Dumbya’s daddy’s friend on the Supreme Court, and the political hacks in Florida.
“Everyone knows that Bush stole the election in 2000, by turning away voters in Florida.”
I dont know that. Were you there watching George do that? How many precints was he at?
Eric, your plan eliminates the secret ballot. Someone could ask for your receipt to prove who you voted for.
>>#19 Les – I dont know that.
Well then you must have just fallen off the turnip truck. Everybody else in America (and the rest of the world, for that matter) knows that.
Are you really that dumb, or are you just jerking our chains?
So instead of lobbyist bribes, they become the officeholders. That’s not new.
Everybody doesn’t know that.
For example, Florida schedules their primary before the allowable date, so that they will be more relavent. They knew when they did the scheduling that their votes would not be counted. Later they scream foul.
People show up to vote late, or without ID, and scream disenfranchised.
Take some responsability for your own actions. Don’t go blaming someone else.
Now it’s a back end run around the electoral college in the states. If you want to get rid of the college, ammend the constitution, don’t make a system as f’ed up as the tax code.
>>Everybody doesn’t know that.
Sure they do, Les. Everybody except you. Most will acknowledge it, some (e.g., Anal Cyst Limbaugh, Loofah Pad O’Reilly) will make believe they don’t know, but come on. They know. EVERYBODY fucking knows.
As to the scheduling of the Florida primary, the pols there were idiots. They knew their votes were going to count when they did it, and their votes shouldn’t count. Wouldn’t have made a difference anyway, President-Elect Obama would have won either way.
Prepare yourself for the dawning of a new day! Finally, the Oval Office trash will be taken out to the Dumpster(R) where it belongs.
@MikeN
They can also ask you for your SSN for any number of reasons. You wouldn’t give that number away unless it’s necessary, would you? If it’s that much of a concern to you you don’t need to give your Voting Number away either.
This simply allows for transparency across the board. Lord knows, as it is right now, there’s really no way to verify the integrity of your vote, or the tabulation of the masses vote. Right now there’s simply the “trust” that the votes are properly tabulated, and how many of us really trust it now?
I don’t think that’s realistic in scenarios of vote-buying or union thuggery.
#24, so everybody who aggrees with you knows. OK
>>so everybody who aggrees with you knows. OK
Les. EVERYBODY knows. You’re deep enough into this hole; stop digging.
I can’t believe you’re even wasting your time debating this point.
Look, everyime I catch you in a lie like “camping a million times” or “everybody knows”, you fall back on the hole I am digging, when you are the one lying.
>>Look, everyime I catch you in a lie like
>>“camping a million times”
Jesus, Les. Are you seriously going to claim that saying I’ve been “camping a million times” was catching me “in a lie”?
Man, you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, Lester.
So pathetic.