Forum Post: One Demand that 99% can agree on... and is needed to save our Democracy/Republic
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 10, 2011, 8:28 a.m. EST by imrational
(527)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
We need to demand that voting machines generate a paper trail and that the machines be easily audited on scene and afterwards to check against tampering.
The following are articles from major news media outlets and wikipedia (wikipedia article has citations backing up its statements).
HERE IS WHY WE NEED TO DEMAND THIS. PLEASE COMMENT IF YOU SUPPORT OR EXPLAIN WHY YOU DON'T
THE DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINES http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2507434&page=1&singlePage=true New Evidence About Viral Memory Cards In a paper last month, "Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine," (available at http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/) Princeton computer professor Edward W. Felten and two graduate students Ariel J. Feldman and J. Alex Halderman discussed a common Diebold machine. They showed that anyone who gets access to the machine and its memory card for literally a minute or two could easily install the group's invisible vote-stealing software on the machine. (Poll workers and others have unsupervised access for much longer periods.) Changing all logs, counters, and associated records to reflect the bogus vote count that it generates, the software installed by the infected memory card (similar to a floppy disk) would be undetectable. In fact, the software would delete itself at the end of Election Day. Even more ominously the memory cards that are used to install this or similar vote-stealing software can act like a virus and infect many other machines if the bad cards are used to amend these machines. This is normal practice with pre- and post-election updates, and no attachment to a network is necessary. Moreover, since memory cards are removed from all voting machines in a given region and inserted into a single machine that accumulates the votes for the region, something worse is possible. "By planting a virus far enough in advance, [a hacker] can ensure that a significant number of machines can steal votes on Election Day" even if he has access to only one or a few machines.
DIEBOLD COMPANY... In August 2003, Walden O'Dell, then the chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fund-raiser for President George W. Bush and had sent a get-out-the-funds letter to 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends in the Republican Party, to be held at his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.[9] In December 2005, O'Dell resigned following reports that the company was facing securities fraud litigation surrounding charges of insider trading.[10]
BUSH AIDE DIES AFTER REQUESTING PROTECTION FROM KARL ROVE In July 2008, the lead attorney in the King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell case, Cliff Arnebeck, sent a letter [3] to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey seeking protection for Connell as a witness in the case, saying he had been threatened. Arnebeck wrote, “We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to 'take the fall' for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations." [4] Arnebeck claims that months later, his source called back and warned that Connell's life was in danger.[5]
At about 6 p.m. on December 19, 2008, Connell was killed, at the age of 45,[1] in the crash of a single-engine 1997 Piper Saratoga private airplane, which he was flying
eVoting Without Fraud: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fraud.html
no matter what type of voting machine any district uses the fact is that election fraud is institutional in many cities always has been and only a small group of party hacks control whos` vote gets counted , most of the worst fraud occurs in traditional democrat controlled counties, Cook County ill . is of course famous for have the dead vote and Phill. Penn also lways seem to have more voters than actually are registered , if you really want to have honest voting you would support real voter ID and bring in outside neutral workers to check registration and tally the counts . THE DEMOCRAT PARTY WILL NEVER GET BEHIND THIS
Thanks for commenting Georgejay. I agree that election fraud has existed for a very, very long time. Gaming the system is just too valuable and the benefits way outweigh the risks. The HBO movie Recount really shows how both sides try to metagame things.
I still think this goal is something the vast majority of Americans would support... and it is something that can be achieved and pointed towards as a success.
The more goals we can come up with that we can and do achieve, the further we can go with this. We need to unify the public towards reform and empower them.
Right, this is the kind of voting fraud we need to be concerned with. But what these same people are doing is using the guise of voter fraud to pass restrictive voting laws that discourage the participation. We could use some of the Occupy energy to fan out to make sure the 99% get registered, get the IDs these new restrictive laws require, and get to the polls to thwart this further assault on our democracy.
sorry Jim but i feel that a secure voter registration system is not too much to ask voting is a right but in many countries its a privilege . with rights come responsibility ,it not to much to ask to be able to show some form of real Id ..you cant even get a phone with out an Id so ,and registration should be done at least 1 month before the election in order to verify the info ...........this would help to end the constant calls for recounts and absentee ballot counts
I don't disagree, but the underlying problem is systemic manipulation, within the current laws, of the electoral process. The law needs to be changed to: eliminate the use of election funding to distort and corrupt the political process, by eliminating all private funding of elections and instead providing for the funding of elections at a restricted level of expenditure using public funds; to eliminate the distortions of the public interest resulting from the excessive influence of lobbyists at all levels of government; to prevent the use of public relations to distort public and political discourse and to eliminate the resulting undue influence; and to strengthen conflict of interest rules to prevent the manipulation of political decisions by concentrated interests.
The problem is, we need to write those laws... all the while lawyers & politicians are attempting to find and build in loopholes.
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you 100%. I just don't know what to push for precisely on those things. we need to get people starting to go and come up with bills.
Hmmm... you got me wondering what petitions need to start circulating at these Occupations around the country. For example, in Michigan, you need "X" number of signatures to put forward a bill to be voted on by the citizens (bypassing the Legislature). I'm sure other states have similar laws.
We need to start coming up with realistic pieces of legislation at the state levels for reform.
This may well be true but doesn't address the principal problem. We have been disenfranchised by the fact that lobbyists and their corporate funders effectively control both the Democrats and the Republicans. Without major reform of the election funding, lobbying, public relations and conflict of interest rules, your vote is meaningless so it makes no difference whether it is accurately counted or not.
I agree it won't fix the main problem... but it's not meant to. We need goals that 99% of Americans agree with and that are realistic and achievable. This one is. No where am I saying this is the only goal. This is just one of many... but it is still something that needs to be promoted.
The more goals we can list that everyone agrees with (and not just one faction), the more we can build unity.