Am I being too paranoid? DIEBOLD and the papertrail.....

[PoliticsSportsMusic]

I believe no matter how badly we beat them on issues or how many scandals they get themselves into,if we don't have a papertrail in place by Nov. then its all over. Shouldn't this be issue number one? Nov. isn't all that far off, pretty soon they will make the excuse time won't allow for having a papertrail in place. You know these people for what they are...LIARS,CHEATS, AND GREEDIEST OF THE GREEDY. Even if I'm being too paranoid...which I'm not since they have proven themselves to be untrustworthy over and over again...shouldn't we do it just to be on the safe side? Come on this is priority number one for us...we have to use all our members to get a push for getting a papertrail in place before NOV...like I say no matter how many new people we get registered, no matter how many issues we beat them on, no matter how many scandals they become involved in....WITHOUT A PAPERTRAIL WE DON'T WIN. One thing you can count on is they will steal an election if they can't win it....am I wrong??????

[goclark]

1. You are not wrong!

Paper Trail
Paper Trail
Paper Trail

Now!:bounce:

[rockymountaindem]

2. I don't see why this is an issue.

How is a paper trail going to help us? I'm sure they can get the machine to print out what you actually voted for, and then change your electronic vote anyway without you knowing. Paper trails aren't going to help us. Optical scan ballots or plain old punchcards will. All this goes back to trying to get everything done quickly. I'd have no problem waiting a week to find out who won if we could get every ballot counted fairly by hand.

[DieboldMustDie]

4. The idea is to keep the "receipts" at the polling place...

for use in a recount.

[Dookus]

5. I simply don't understand the argument

that hand-counting is more accurate.

Machines are MUCH better at quickly and accurately tabulating things.

The problem isn't computers. It's the potential for mis-using them. We need to ensure that the software used is open-source, publicly available, and anybody responsible for using software that isn't certified should face a LONG jail term.

[ex_jew]

9. Kindly remind me what "things" computers tabulate so accurately

I know that humans in Canada and France successfully tabulate millions of ballots with no apparent difficulty. Do you have an example of computers performing as well ?

Computers deal quite efficiently with groups of numbers, but obtaining the group of numbers that accurately represents a given physical reality is far from straight-forward.

[Dookus]

11. LOL

I don't even know how to begin to reply.

Clearly, machines and computers are used to tabulate almost EVERYTHING because they can do so quickly and without bias or error.

If you had 1 million punch cards to count, do you think humans would do the counting better than a machine?


I'm surprised this is even arguable.

on edit: As for hand-counting votes, do you really believe that has no potential for abuse? To determine whether a human is biased or cheating, we have to look into his/her soul. To determine whether a machine is biased, we simply need look at the source code.

[Mobius]

12. The point is that machines are hacked

by humans, I believe. :shrug:

[Dookus]

13. and we need to make sure that they aren't

but that doesn't mean we should reject technology because of this potential. We just need to use technology to make sure it doesn't happen.

[ex_jew]

16. To "count" something physical, computers must use primitive mechanical

sensors, which are not especially successful. That's why we have (or at least used to have) humans CHECK what the machines tell us. Without comparing the results from our senses to what the machine says, we have no basis for confidence beyond blind faith.

As to the potential for abuse, the remedy is to have multiple human observers with different political preferences perform the determination. In case of a dispute (which I believe is extremely rare when dealing with paper ballots) you can devise a mechanism involving more people that will make the determination. Leaving it all to a photo-electric eye reflects a primitive faith in technology, which is hardly well-founded.

As to examining the source code, I work on computers every day, and the question of "what version of the source code is actually running" must
always be addressed. When you're talking about thousands of different machines at remote locations AND the manufacturer refuses to let you see the source code (or any patches they may have applied) you can reliably state absolutely nothing about what code was running. There are just so many ways that alterations can take place that the whole concept of "looking at source code" as a guard against bias is fairly laughable.

[Dookus]

20. actually

machines are VERY effective at counting "something physical". Much much faster and much more accurate.

As for primitive mechanical sensors: In 1880, the Government took 7 years to count the results of the census. In 1890, they commissioned a machine that counted punch cards - they completed the task in 7 months, and saved millions of dollars (in 1890 dollars!).

I belong to the Computer History Museum, and I've seen the machine. Discover Magazine recently did a piece on the museum. They pictured it and said:

"Hand tallying the 1880 census took seven grueling years. Engineer Herman Holleriwth won a government competition for a mechanical device to tabulate the 1890 census. Pins dropped through holes in punched cards and touched individual cups of mercury, completing electrical circuits that spun the counting dials. It was a roaring success. One hundred of the sturdy oak-cased machines counted 62 million cards at a rate of 1,000 cards an hour per machine, allowing the data to be tallied in six months at a cost that was $5 million below forecasts. Hollerith's company merged with two others and became IBM in 1924. Punched cards, recalcitrant chads notwithstanding, would be used for data entry for more than a century."




hand-counting millions of ballots is silly, and there's no way that humans can do it more accurately than machines.

[PoliticsSportsMusic]

6. If you believe that way then why do you come here?

Isn't all this pointless? Why even talk about politics...there is no point,they are going to win and we might as well pack it up and take what they dish out. I'm not inclined to sit here typing it all out for you so go here: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ if you want to know more and WHY a papertrail is necessary. You can put checks in place that which would prevent the concern you have....but first you gotta care...which frankly you don't seem to.

[rockymountaindem]

7. I'm not an idiot.

I understand the perils of BBV as well as the next guy. All I'm saying is that we're directing our efforts down the wrong avenue. What if you vote for Candidate X, the machine prints out a receipt for candidate x, but your vote is tabulated for candidate Y anyway. Then you put your receipt in the ballot box, but no recount is necessary because candidate Y "won by a wide margin". This is all just as open to cheating as receipt-less BBV. This is why we should just try to completely get rid of computer machines and use optical scans or manual hand-counts.

[w4rma]

17. Imho, the ballot itself should be the "paper trail". A paper ballot. (nt)

[Hippo_Tron]

19. Plus you don't really have to wait because of exit polling (n/t)

[Gildor Inglorion]

3. "time won't allow for having a papertrail in place"

How hard could it be? The gasoline pump gives you a receipt when you use a credit card. Somebody (Diebold?) is doing some mighty fancy shuckin' and jivin'.

[NMDemDist2]

10. Diebold makes ATM machines mostly

and all ATM;s give paper reciepts, Every machine Diebold makes gives a paper trail, but gee IT"S TOO HARD to make a voting machine keep a paper trail

Good Grief!!

[OneBlueSky]

8. yup . . . this is what's going to guarantee BushCo's victory . . .

they'll alter the results in a few districts in a few key states, just enough to give them an Electoral College majority . . . they've done it before and didn't get caught, so if you think they won't do it again, you haven't been paying attention . . . remember that heavily Jewish district in Florida that gave Buchanan so many vote that even HE said it was bullshit? . . . remember the Georgia Democratic candidates who were leading in the polls by substantial margins just days before the election, only to lose on Election Day? . . . they've done it before, and without a paper trail there's nothing to prevent them from doing it again . . . nothing . . .

it's not who votes that counts . . . it's who counts the votes . . .

[MoonRiver]

14. I completely agree.

Often I feel like we're spinning our wheels in complete futility here debating the virtues of Kerry versus Nader, and various campaign issues. These things will be moot points if our votes aren't counted.

[dusty64]

15. You are not paranoid

at all, but are unfortunately a realist. This "voting" method is one of the gravest threats to our democracy.

[Zinfandel]

18. They ARE planning to steal this election. And we can't do anything about

about it...Nothing! Think about it, once they are declared the winner...what can we do???

They control the Congress, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court, the media, the military, etc...it's been planned for a long time with years of right-wing think tanks chipping away. (And 9-11 and the Patriot Act making it even easier for them).

Tell me what can we really do? Protest? They'll shoot us down in the streets if necessary and then to pacify us, they'll give us hours of bullshit hearings on TV if the election was or wasn't stolen, to take the fire out of half the angry people.

Again if they steal it, what can we really do?

This what fascist and fasism is.