Posted on 07/20/2008 5:07:47 AM PDT by lifelong_republican
"A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections."
(Excerpt) Read more at scoop.co.nz ...
So we need a paper trail or other recountable record.
The word you really want is "audit trail" ~ an "audit trail" may or may not generate "paper", but it allows you to track any transaction forward and back.
Whereas it is conceivable we can develop satisfactory "audit trails" for electronic voting systems, it is inconceivable that we can ever develop "audit trails" for paper ballot systems.
I believe voting should always be done by paper ballot so that there is a paper trail but I wonder why, if the 2002 elections were “fixed” for the “evil” Republicans, what happened in the 2006 mid term elections?
How come they were able to fix election in 2002 (and 2000 and 2004) but not in 2006. I never heard any mention of election fraud or voter suppression when the Dems gained seats in the House and Senate. Is it election fraud only when Republicans win?
You are absolutely right, Sender.
No one in America should have to wonder if their vote would or would not be counted accurately.
We should lead the way for the world in providing representation in government for our citizenry, as our nation’s founders intended.
What we need are honest people. Then we can use any system.
You make an excellent point.
There is no doubt that Democrats have broken laws to promote blackbox ‘voting’.
There is a very real cause for concern that they will throw elections and get away with it because the electronics make it quick and easy to tamper with results on a wide scale with little or no risk of detection.
Yes, of course, because they are controlled by the tri-lateral commission and the skull and bones society and the global military-industrial complex. They threw it in 2006 just to keep suspicion low.
Who’s to say the patch supplied by this whistle blower is the original patch Diebold used? Who’s to say it was not corrupted by the whistle blower and WHY is this information being released NOW?
The whole thing stinks and I’m not buying it for a moment.
Well said, indeed, Athurus!
I totally agree that there shouldn’t be this kind of doubt about what’s going on with elections: they’re too important, with too much at stake.
Americans need to own their elections, to hold them openly, transparently, and without the taint of doubt imposed by the use of unknown programming.
I totally agree with you about honest people.
The problem with the electronics is that they can be manipulated by dishonest people without the honest people being able to know about it.
There are known problems with paper ballots, but at least they’re physically observable and securable. With the electronics, all the same tampering and more can be done, with far-less risk of being caught at it.
You make an excellent point.
We shouldn’t have to wonder what’s going on with elections at all, and with the electronics as they are now, there’s no way to know if the votes are recorded or tallied as they were intended to be.
Well, lo and behold, he couldn't get it to work either. He put it into some other sort of device and "reset" it. It worked after that.
Who friggen knows what the hell they're recording? Whatever they want to program in to it?
Was it election fraud when John Kennedy was first elected President via stuffed ballot boxes?
There is more to this story than we realize.
If this Diebold expert is now working for the McCain campaign, does that not suggest that McCain is concerned enough about ‘Rat election fraud that he’s already gearing up for the possibility of an ‘electronic butterfly ballot’ attack come Election Day?
This may be one of the smarter moves by McCain.
Oops. I caught that ‘former adviser’ to McCain sentence.
Argh.
OK, letting the guy go may NOT have been one of McCain’s smarter moves.
Holy crud, this guy is making it hard as Hell to support him!
The truth according to Libs:
1. When they win, the people have spoken and they have a mandate.
2. When puds win, they cheated and they have no right to hold office.
Stephen Spoonamore donated to the Hpward Dean campaign.
Need more be said? http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=name&lname=Spoonamore
You are so right csvset!
The election judge and some unidentified person also walked around behind the machines looking at what the voters were entering on their screens, in my precinct.
You mention previous election tampering. The thing is, the electronics make that easier to do in a more widespread way,
as well as easier to conceal.
You make a really good point, mkjessup.
More Republicans are realizing the implications of this problem all the time.
Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State, Mike Coffman, knew enough to decertify electronic voting machines.
McCain really should get on this and stay on it, if he’s going to get the votes from his supporters.
The truth according to computer security experts is that the electronic systems aren’t suitable for use in elections.
Another problem with them is that they’re exhorbitantly expensive to purchase and maintain - while being extremely unreliable - and thus an unfair burden on the taxpayers.
No individual’s personal behavior changes the fact that the electronics aren’t sufficiently reliable or secure for use in elections.
Recounting votes from an electronic voting machine is senseless. It will always report the same numbers.
IHMO, we need an optical scan ballot, filled out by the voter. The scanner would reject ballots not filled out correctly and the voter could correct the mistake(s). If the ballot scans successfully, a printed record is created and given to the voter for confirmation.
Scanned ballots can be recounted Either by hand or by machine.
I worked the polls in KY for years and we had a system like this. Except it didn’t print the confirmation.
Now I live in SC and we have electronic voting machines made by ES&S. They are good machines, but, IMHO, voter confidence is higher with an optical ballot system.
You said it upchuck! I couldn’t agree more. While the opscans are somewhat vulnerable, the ballots would still be there, physically, and the electronic tallies could be preliminary until the official hand counts of the ballots were completed. The ES&S machines, as the others, do have some problems associated with them:
http://verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5165
the gooberment is forcing us to get rid of 50 year old mechanical machines that cannot be rigged, for black-box machines of dubious origin and security...
You said it Chode! The lever machines weren’t perfect, but to rig them would be a very obvious process and it’d be quite difficult to affect a significant number of them. With the electronics, they can be rigged in large numbers with no one able to see it going on.
I say let’s go back to the old days of paper ballots. Work out a deal with the mob and this election will be over with.
Paper ballots aren’t perfect, as everyone knows, but they’re tougher to rig undiscernably than the electronics. If the mob wants to tamper with elections, they’ll have a much easier time getting away with it using the blackboxes than with voters watching over their ballots.
The Democrats won’t need to go to the trouble of recruiting illegal voters. The electronics make it much easier for them to rig elections than that. They can cancel votes, switch votes, and introduce entirely fake votes with ease, and with little or no risk of detection, with the blackboxes. You’ll get to vote for Obama without even knowing that’s what you did.
The best way to solve this problem is to have conservatives in left wing states like California, Maine, New York, move to swing states like Missouri, Colorado, Florida. Take over the state governments, send their own slate of electors to DC and we can do away with all the fraud on election day.
Aside from this ridiculous story being the same old tired conspiracy crap, Cathy Cox is a Democrat and the only reason she would get upset about these alleged "patches" is because Diebold PREVENTED the RATS from cheating.
Thanks for the kind words.
That link contains some interesting info.
I can’t speak for the entire state, but here in Aiken County that is the machine we use. So far, there haven’t been any major issues to my knowledge.
We have those lever machines in Pennsylvania and they have always worked great.
“Its not who votes, but who counts the votes”- Joseph Stalin
It could be worse, in King County Washington they can recount but each time they magically discover more ballots that just happen to be for the Democrat. The fact that some precincts wound up with more ballots counted than they had voters who signed the voter role was chalked up to simple mistakes.
We use ballots that resemble a “fill in the circle” multiple choice test. The ballots are simple to understand and use (no butterfly ballots, no chads). The ballot readers record results instantly and save the ballot for recount purposes.
Why is everyone trying to reinvent the wheel when this simply, relatively low tech solution is readily available?
yup, with both sides inspecting the machines like they do here, it'd impossible to rig them... and even if a part breaks, any random machine shop can make a new one to replace it.
There are conservatives in every state, and they shouldn’t have to leave their homes to get their votes counted.
The electronics will still thwart voters’ intentions no matter where they are used.
If it weren’t for the faulty electronics, there wouldn’t even be this type of controversy.
Paper ballots can and should be kept secure.
The blackboxes can’t be kept secure.
You’re welcome, upchuck.
One of the worst aspects of the electronic systems is the way that things can be going quite wrong but seem right.
You’re right about the lever machines in PA, but the Democrats are violating PA elections laws to have them all replaced with electronic systems.
What’s labeled a “red flag” is that the patch was applied in only two counties.
If the patch was indeed helpful in preventing cheating, why wasn’t it installed in all counties?
Yes, the official raising this point is a Democrat. That doesn’t change the fact that treating different counties differently is suspicious.
The first red flag went up when the computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds.
Those two counties were "Democrat strongholds", meaning they were hotbeds of corruption, and meaning there was likely nobody guarding the henhouse. It's interesting that Democrat Cox was miffed that she wasn't notified ahead of time, lol. Yeah, so she could give her Democrat cronies a heads-up? I don't think so.
I don’t want conservatives to leave their homes to get their votes counted so much as I want conservative to have a strategic takeover of the nation. The big dream is to have control of 31 states, and 62 senators. The really big dream is to have control of 38 states and be in the position to have a constitutional convention.
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