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Edited on Wed Aug-06-03 11:06 AM by RedEagle
Enter, the SERVE military and overseas voting project where our "Patriotic" government will make it possible for servicemen to vote for them via the Internet.
Under the guise of "Partriotism" and "for our overseas troops" the money that could help take care of them has been and is being spent to secure their ability to vote- or so they claim.
It appears government is more than willing to spend on servicemen if it means getting votes.
According to experts, first of all, they are doing everything they shouldn't do if you're even going to contemplate Internet voting, which, as one expert put it, IF it was secure, would be the first secure Internet project in it's entire history, like using PC's for voting and a Microsoft base. This thing is entirely susceptible to insider fraud and hacking, before and after any encryption is applied. The votes go to a server in the Pentagon, then are downloaded to individual counties. (If I were a county doing this, I would never do more with that computer then get the results, and enter them by HAND into the county totals)
The voting engine is provided by Election.com, already hacked in a Canada primary, because they didn't apply patches. This company was majority owned by undisclosed Saudi interests, (Gee, the Saudi's pop up everywhere)then I saw one story about the Saudi's possibly being a front for Yemen interests....Bingo, Saudi's immediately drop out and Accenture buys up their shares.
Accenture is basically doing this. Election.com was partnered with Accenture previously, to "Take care of all your E-voting needs." Accenture is an Authur Anderson spin off, off-shore corporate entitiy, registered in the Bahamas, headed, I believe, by two good ol' Texas boys.
That's right, the votes of our servicemen and overseas citizens is being handled by interests that don't even ante up to pay for the services these fine people do for our country.
This is a complete and utter disgrace, another means of "using" the military in the guise of providing a "patriotic" service.
I've seen Vets eyes cloud over when they discuss this, even the facts described above, because, "Yeh, but they get a means to vote on time..."
Voting is difficult, granted. But you don't use that as an excuse to put votes in jeopardy. The least that could happen is a denial of service attack, where the votes don't get through at all. But the one that really grates, is that the votes will go to servers in the Pentagon, and that tells me Rumsfeld can get his hands on them.
These guys are more than willing to spend billions on this project while neglecting the needs of these fine people once they have done their bit for the country.
You hear about how the military always leans one way in voting, but I'm hearing more and more about the dissent of the troops overseas. For many, there would be no way they'll vote for Bush. For many, if they really want their vote to count, they need to get an FVAP ballot from headquarters or at consulates, if they think one from home won't arrive in time. Not all states do FVAP, but there is another, little known provision that some do, that let them take a blank ballot with them (?) Granted, you probably could only vote for the major issues this way, but better then goodness knows what actually happens to an Internet vote.
By the way, I've read the GAO report relevant sections to this, and it slams the military hierarchy supposedly in charge of making sure servicemen get to vote. I know that there are some, past and present, who have tried everything possible to make voting happen. But there's another side to that too, where some officers just flat out refused. Sad, very sad.
We need to insure the military can vote. ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTION THERE. But this smells like a set up for the 2004 election. They will just do away with the postmark questions. Speaking of 2004, this project has been sold to states as a "pilot" project. What the heck is a pilot project, that could affect 100,000 - 200,000 votes, doing running in a presidential election?
If I had people in the service overseas, I would tell them not to vote using this project. (And family has had a long history, no one drafted)
It just infuriates me that there is all kinds of federal money to spend on this, while many of us contribute to help disabled vets here at home. My neighbor works with a group that tries to take care of the forgotten ones, many of them in need of psychiatric help, who are just holed up in the foothills somewhere......
They really believe troops are just cannon fodder for their money grubbing ends.
:grr: :grr: :grr:
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