Will the Next Election Be Hacked?
POSTED BY: FutureMrsFIllion
UPDATED: Friday, September 6, 2024 03:28
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I submit this for your reading pleasure.
Will the Next Election Be Hacked?
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Rolling Stone
Thursday 05 October 2006 Issue
Fresh disasters at the polls - and new evidence from an industry insider - prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted.
Read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" in the June 15th, 2006, issue of "Rolling Stone," his investigation into how Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it all too apparent to most Americans that our electoral system is broken. And private-sector entrepreneurs were quick to offer a fix: Touch-screen voting machines, promised the industry and its lobbyists, would make voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM. Congress, always ready with funds for needy industries, swiftly authorized $3.9 billion to upgrade the nation's election systems - with much of the money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of America's 180,000 precincts. But as midterm elections approach this November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election - and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries. In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment vulnerable to tampering. And in Ohio - where, as I recently reported in "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have cost John Kerry the presidency - a government report uncovered large and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in Cuyahoga County.
Even worse, many electronic machines don't produce a paper record that can be recounted when equipment malfunctions - an omission that practically invites malicious tampering. "Every board of election has staff members with the technological ability to fix an election," Ion Sancho, an election supervisor in Leon County, Florida, told me. "Even one corrupt staffer can throw an election. Without paper records, it could happen under my nose and there is no way I'd ever find out about it. With a few key people in the right places, it would be possible to throw a presidential election."
Chris Hood remembers the day in August 2002 that he began to question what was really going on in Georgia. An African-American whose parents fought for voting rights in the South during the 1960s, Hood was proud to be working as a consultant for Diebold Election Systems, helping the company promote its new electronic voting machines. During the presidential election two years earlier, more than 94,000 paper ballots had gone uncounted in Georgia - almost double the national average - and Secretary of State Cathy Cox was under pressure to make sure every vote was recorded properly.
Hood had been present in May 2002, when officials with Cox's office signed a contract with Diebold - paying the company a record $54 million to install 19,000 electronic voting machines across the state. At a restaurant inside Atlanta's Marriott Hotel, he noticed the firm's CEO, Walden O'Dell, checking Diebold's stock price on a laptop computer every five minutes, waiting for a bounce from the announcement.
Hood wondered why Diebold, the world's third-largest seller of ATMs, had been awarded the contract. The company had barely completed its acquisition of Global Election Systems, a voting-machine firm that owned the technology Diebold was promising to sell Georgia. And its bid was the highest among nine competing vendors. Whispers within the company hinted that a fix was in.
"The Diebold executives had a ne
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Quote:
Originally posted by FutureMrsFIllion:
...The right to vote is simply too important - and too hard won - to be surrendered without a fight. It is time for Americans to reclaim our democracy from private interests.
I agree. And when we validate the voting process we should validate the voters too. Let's require valid photo I.D. and proof of citizenship from all voters.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Problem with your post GEEZER is that as far as I know, there has been no evidence of massive voter fraud. There's a lot of evidence of election fraud.
Id's for voting are essentially a poll tax. You can argue that people are supposed to have one by law anyway, but for poor people, who don't have the extra 10 or 15 bucks it takes to get an I.D. card, if they don't have one they simply won't vote. That's a chilling effect on our election turn-out and not one that a purported democracy should be advocating.
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If every voter had to be validated it would be a Republican landslide every four years. And besides, voting is simply way too important to make sure that all ballots casted are from citizens.
Make a free voter card. Last I checked my SS card was free, and I've lost that about a millon times.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Righteous9:
Problem with your post GEEZER is that as far as I know, there has been no evidence of massive voter fraud. There's a lot of evidence of election fraud.
Id's for voting are essentially a poll tax. You can argue that people are supposed to have one by law anyway, but for poor people, who don't have the extra 10 or 15 bucks it takes to get an I.D. card, if they don't have one they simply won't vote. That's a chilling effect on our election turn-out and not one that a purported democracy should be advocating.
Hmmm. I have to show a valid picture ID as well as my voter registration receipt to vote. I have no problem with it. The right to vote is a right given only to citizens over the age of 18. Proving that you are both is not an encumbrance. Also, all the poor people I know, have to have a picture ID to cash/apply for their Wic and Welfare and food stamps - so I am afraid I disagree. Having to prove who you are is not undemocratic if everyone has to do it.
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It's FAR too late in the election cycle to insist on this now. How about a 5 year lead time?
But I agree with righteous. There is NO evidence of massive voter fraud. That's a republican decoy. There IS evidence of massive election fraud.
What do YOU all propose to do about it?
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
It's FAR too late in the election cycle to insist on this now. How about a 5 year lead time?
But I agree with righteous. There is NO evidence of massive voter fraud. That's a republican decoy. There IS evidence of massive election fraud.
What do YOU all propose to do about it?
Bloody coup?
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Right Spacelips... you make such a convincing argument...
all those "damned illegals that couldn't give a shit about our country - who only come here to take advantage of the privilages we fought for and then take their money and run",(did I get this right so far?)
are going to take time out of their day to then go vote in our election? Makes perfect sense to me.
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
It's FAR too late in the election cycle to insist on this now. How about a 5 year lead time?
But I agree with righteous. There is NO evidence of massive voter fraud. That's a republican decoy. There IS evidence of massive election fraud.
What do YOU all propose to do about it?
Wow that's news to..er..reality. Most states have not even tried to tackle this issue, and for those that have the results have been unbelievable. When Arizona passed prop 200 in 2000 they found up to 60% of voters were illegal(Prima county), when Sanchez won his house seat in California investigators found "concrete evidence" of 700+ votes cast by non-citizens, There are hundreds of cases of real evidence about this. The case for "NO" evidence is foolish and dishonest at best, and the problem is far more than GOP hype. Has this board always been so full of untrue blanket statements that people let slide?
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Hehe...so in all of google all I have for prima county voter fraud are freerepublic links and one to Hannity.
That's your hard evidence?
oh here.
http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/starmedia/43645
Graf - the guy arguing for the prop said that there were at least 3 or 4 cases of voter fraud in the county
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