North Carolina: Diebold is pulling out again, before the deal could be consummated. (Sounds almost sexy, eh?) Let us hope that we can all echo the immortal words of Bullwinkle: "This time for sure!" The company simply does not want to give up its code for scrutiny. By anyone. They'll go under before that happens...
The bad news: NC may go with ES&S.
The word is getting out: None of 'em are trustworthy. This excellent story in Wired explains why a switch to ES&S won't make all the problems go away. An excerpt:
David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and chair of California's Voting Systems Technical Assessment and Advisory Board, said that programming software on a removable memory card raises grave concerns.Barack Obama gets it. I knew there was a reason I liked this guy. He just introduced a bill called The Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2005.
"The instant anyone with security sensibility hears this, red flags and clanging alarms happen," Jefferson said. "Because this software that is inserted from the memory module is not part of the code base that goes through the qualification process, so it's code that escapes federal scrutiny."
John Kerry gets it. Actually, about a year ago he got it -- but good. But now he's talking about it. The Republicans and the Democratic ostriches (the ones who refuse to acknowledge that vote fraud is real) used to make frequent reference to Kerry's acquiescence. Well, he ain't acquiescent anymore, thank god.
Bev Harris and the tapes. Remember this story -- the incriminating poll tapes she supposedly pulled out of the garbage in Volusia County, Florida? Shortly after the election, we heard a week of hoopla about this evidence. And then...nada. She refused to answer even politely worded inquiries about the matter. That's when I became a Harris skeptic.
Well...here they are. The tapes. In .pdf format. Make of them what you will. I can no longer figure out what's going on with this woman, but I would love to hear the opinions of my readers.
Diebold in California. Turns out the company's wares may not be sailing into a ballot booth near you. Once again, it's a matter of "show us your source code...or else take a hike." I don't know if these new "more rigorous" tests are rigged, or if Diebold really is in trouble. But I suspect the latter...
And now the bad news. (You knew there had to be some bad news, right?) Hans von Spakovsky, a Republican activist who helped rig up the Florida voter purge that doomed Gore, has been nominated by Bush to the Federal Elections Commission.
Fox. Henhouse. You know the metaphor.
5 comments:
joe, glad you saw the import of that wired article; the rest of this stuff is exciting as all get out! even von spakovsky's nomination is sort of intriguing; these guys just do not get it at all, and they continue to misgovern as they always have. no learning curve, no reversion to reasonable choices, just more insane crapola.
keep up the heat.
This may be good news, but what does it say about the opposition that only now is it beginning to contest the election fraud which is puting Democrats permanently out of power, and that we have to be thankful that the dwindling minority party is finally doing something?
They've known for years, beginning with the huge point swings in Georgia and elsewhere, and of course Florida 2000....
This culture of political comfort they share is not going to solve our problems. If Kerry had gotten on the horn about Ohio years ago, and Democratics had demanded an investigation on pain of shutting down the government, we would not be in this position.
These guys are too self-absorbed, too concerned with re-election, to beholden to corporate interests, excessively bedazzled with their own sense of self-importance (they're acting "for the good of the country, etc.) What they really mean is, they're acting for the good of status quo which rewards people like them with enormous privilege, no matter what happens to the rest of us.
So yeah, it's better than nothing. But don't look to these guys for any real change or any real opposition.
Why did it take Bev Harris A YEAR to post these? .... Because NOT posting them helped to discredit the Election Reform movement for a year.
Why is she posting them NOW? .... Because she wants a new influx of donation dollars and to position herself to discredit the movement with some new stunts in 2006.
Hey Bev... wanna post your 'non-profit' (that offered assistance to Rossi's campaign, by your own admission) organization's tax returns???
Would someone please explain to me what those poll tapes mean, and what (if anything) can be done about it -- other than Praise Bev, I mean.
CANNONFIRE:
You wanted a simple, user-friendly math explanation, so here goes...
link to the site
http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel
/TruthIsAllPollingSimulation.mht
by clicking on TruthIsAll
It's for those who say: "Math was my worst subject in high school".
If you've ever placed a bet at the casino or race track, or played the lottery, you already know the basics.
It's about probability.
It's about common sense.
It's not all that complicated.
It's for individuals who have taken algebra, probability and statistics and want to see how they apply to election polling.
It's for graduates with degrees in mathematics, political science, an MBA, etc. who may or may not be familiar with simulation concepts. Simulation is a powerful tool for analyzing uncertainty- be it coin flipping or election polling.
It's for Excel spreadsheet users who enjoy creating math models.
It's for writers, blogs and politicians who seek the truth:
Robert Koehler, Brad from BradBlog, John Conyers, Barbara Boxer, Mark Miller, Fitrakis, Wasserman, USCV, Dopp, Freeman, Baiman, Simon, Alistair Thompson, Krugman, Keith Olberman, Mike Malloy, Randi Rhodes, Cannonball,
Stephanie Miller etc..
It's for Netizens who frequent Discussion Forums.
It's for those in the Media who are still waiting for editor approval to discuss documented incidents of vote spoilage, vote switching and vote suppression in recent elections and which are confirmed by impossible pre-election and exit poll deviations from the recorded vote.
It's for naysayers who promote faith-based hypotheticals in their unrelenting attempts to debunk the accuracy of the pre-election and exit polls.
....
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