Gore Vidal Savages Electronic Voting 1029
gribbly writes "aging author and social critic Gore Vidal savaged electronic voting in an interview with the LA Weekly. The interview deals mainly with (what's wrong with) the Bush Administration, but halfway down he says: 'We don't want an election without a paper trail...all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?'."
How much press will it get, though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares about paper trails? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why oh why (Score:5, Insightful)
sure, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Liberals are the ones who pushed for Motor-Voter legislation and now want to give driver's licenses to illegals. Who's up to their eyeballs in corruption?
Re:Why oh why (Score:2, Insightful)
No Paper Trail = No Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
From that point the ballots should be counted in the traditional manner and used to audit the eletronic reports. If there is any significiant discrepency the paper ballots should take precedence. This procedure should continue until the eletronic voting process is as reliably accurate as the ballot method for a period of years.
After that point we can take the electronic method as the primary method, witht he printed results being automaticly placed into a ballot box connected to these machines.
If there is ever a time the printed ballot form should cease to exist i cannot for-see it right now. If there isnt physical evidence of the voting process somewhere, i feel highly dubious as to the integrity of the entire system.
--vision
I hardly believe (Score:2, Insightful)
Stop bitching and moaning and get out there and DO something about it. Jeez...
That's the last political statement I will make on /.
No Whining Zone (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh, and no solutions are provided in the article either, other than to replace the current swag of corrupt politicians with a new swag of corrupt politicians.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:0, Insightful)
What I'd really like to know is whether the owners of those companies also contributed to the Democrats. It's standard operating procedure to donate to both parties so you're in business whoever is elected. And with something as delicate as voting equipment I can't imagine they'd donate to one and not the other.
This article has once again confirmed by belief that Slashdot is as much political as it is technological. Dozens of paragraphs of Bush-bashing and it gets on Slashdot for a passing (politically biased) comment about electronic voting? Can we be any more liberal, please???
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:3, Insightful)
Jeez if the media is "liberal" in American I just do not wanna think about how much those poor conservatives must struggle to get their point of view accross the news....
Isn't potential election stealing worrying? (Score:5, Insightful)
Proof? No, but what looks like frightening bugs in one of the most critical tasks of a democracy, from companies whose owners are heavily involved in politic. Now, that does not necessarily mean that election-rigging is under way, but IMHO it is cause enough for public scrutiny.
Both sides of the political debate here in the States and abroad would love to steal an election.
So what? Should we let them do it, trusting that some sort of balance will be kept by the rigging on both side?
Donors to the "administration"??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone who pays taxes in the US is a "donor" to the executive branch. Perhaps you mean the Bush campaign? In that case, you may be suprised that most companies actually donate pretty equally to both sides just to cover the bases. What were these companies' total donations to political campaigns compared to just to just Bush's? Without that info, this is a meaninglessly paranoid "article".
Re:I hardly believe (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ugggg.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hiding the process used to count votes, and making that process unverifyable (is that a word?) once the votes have been counted, is an execellent way to steal an election.
Since all the electronic voting equipment manufacturers are insisting on hidden, unverifyable code, and all of them are "rooting for" the same political party, it isn't exactly a wacko idea to think there might be something fishy going on here.
Yes, both parties would love to steal an election. But one party appears to actually be implementing the means to do so.
better than... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well said Mr. Vidal. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps the USA already is a despotic state but with better PR. After all the last election wasn't actually won by Bush, and there was that scene of Republicans battering down the doors of the Democrat offices where they were holding ballots. You wont know if you're living in a dictatorship until you test the boundaries. But if the voting machines get in then you'll lose your chance.
Gore also mentions the partiot act part II which he condemns utterly. An old quote I came across recently now seems frighteningly prescient:
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or pick up all those "liberal" newspapers,
This one is just laughable, do you really want to count paper for paper over whether papers are more liberal than conservative? Maybe a few of the big ones are known for conservatism, but the vast majority are certianly not.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:1, Insightful)
As for radio it is rather conservative when compared to what one might claim as the mainstream media. Just like newspapers that come out of California and New York are much more liberal then the nation's average.
I actually like the balance of media in our country. That being said I think that it might help if they were a little more educated on the issues no matter what way they bended with their views.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:4, Insightful)
Left vs. Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop it. Just stop it.
It disgusts me how easily people are blinded by their preferred camp. Both major parties(and their associated platforms) have major problems. Pretending otherwise is foolish, but it seems that that's just what people want to do. It's especially amusing when we have repeats of previous incidents that garner the same response from opposite sites. Clinton lies about blowjob? IMPEACH!(if "Right"), FORGIVE!(if "Left"). Bush lies about WMDs? CONDEMN!(if "Left"), IGNORE!(if "Right"). Sound similar? They are! What happened to lying itself being bad? Why won't people admit that their own side can fuck up too?
It doesn't matter which side you claim to be on. Evaluate people based on what they do, not what views they pay lip service to. If you do otherwise, you're just being a sheep.
And for the love of all that is good and right in the world, come up with some new insults while you're at it!
Re:I hardly believe (Score:1, Insightful)
Happens on Slashdot all the time. Everyone works themselves up into a sort of religious anti-Bush frenzy, where anything goes, no comment is out of line. Accuse him of anything, who needs facts? You've got the support of a thousand me-too'ers here.
Paper trail not the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
-Some poll workers didn't put reciepts in lock boxes.
-Some poll workers decided to "manually enter" data from back-up paper ballots once they got the machines working.
-Some reciepts/machines did not make it back to the main office until two days after elections.
-State law requires initials on paper reciepts. Some unititaled ones were counted anyway.
And before you come down too hard on Bush, it's the Dems who are benefiting here. From a developer standpoint it is clear to me that the problem is poor system design. Every company is trying to design an electronic equivalent to a paper process that is already suprisingly flawed. For example, because of civil rights issues, it is illegal to require a voter ID here. Which means in the electronic world, you cannot store a 1-to-1 relationship between a voter and a vote. What needs to be done is a standard design process: gather requirements, design the system, and implement it. Because state and federal laws come into play, legislatures should be envolved in the whole process and revamp laws where necessary. In the end, it all comes down to poor design.
Re:Who cares about paper trails? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:1, Insightful)
It does to most far lefties. This doesn't bother rich liberals, yet, because they see themselves as fighting a common enemy. But as the country moves farther left and adopts more and more confiscatory tax policy, just wait and see how many of these rich liberals suddenly turn conservative.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not accusing them of being shallow and embracing liberalism only because they're not being taxed "too much" yet. They may accept tax increases for awhile. But when they realize that all this new money flowing into the government won't turn into real services for the people, they will suddently realize why we conservatives are for lower taxes: because as bad as it may be for money to be in the hands of selfish rich people, it's a lot worse to put it in the hands of a bunch of bureaucrats.
no! motor voter != all drivers can vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberals are the ones who pushed for Motor-Voter legislation and now want to give driver's licenses to illegals. Who's up to their eyeballs in corruption?
This is mixing two issues. Motor Voter is about allowing you to submit for voter registration *at* the DMV. It is not about giving the right to vote to people with drivers licenses. They are two entirely different processes. Motor Voter was a _huge_ success in increasing voter registration by making it convient for the average person.
Right. And I'm sure they were donors to the Clinton Administration as well.
From what I've been reading. O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, has been reliably quoted as saying that he will deliver states to the Republican party.
Chuck Hagel, a republican senator, was at one time (and probably still is) a part owner of Election Systems and Software (ES&S).
It does not matter if they *are* being evil, what matters is that they should not even be _close_ to voting companies. It is a clear conflict of interest and smells bad no matter how you put it. I'd go further and say that all voting machines should not be done by companies at all -- too much at risk.
This has nothing to do with conspiricy theory, it has everything to do with common sense. You lock doors of your house, not to keep bad people out, but to "keep honest people honest". Power corrupts. And these people should not be putting themselves in to places where they could be corrupted, or even give the appearance of being corrupt. Its just wrong.
Re:Why oh why (Score:5, Insightful)
A large number of Americans supported Hitler in the 1930's - including Prescott Bush, George's grandfather who eventually had his bank taken away from him by the US government for supporting the Nazis.
Bush is at least as much a raving rightwing religious lunatic as Hitler was (he has allegedly been found face down on the Oval Office floor praying) - and he has much more power and much less control and much less opposition in this country than Hitler did in Germany.
Finally, Bush's cronies, the neocons, are mostly neo-Troskyites. It's amusing to me that the rightwing Christian Zionists are all supporting people who follow other people who were essentially ex-Communists! It doesn't get more bizarre than this.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Republican agrees (Score:2, Insightful)
You may disagree with Gore Vidal, but while being quite inflamatory, he is articulate enough in expressing his position that I don't think it is fair to characterize him as an idiot.
More importantly, not being born in the US does not in any way reduce the value of your insights and opinion on the American system. I was born in NZ, and have lived in several other countries since then. I can assure you that I know a lot more about the US constitution and current government than the average native, and seeing how things work in other countries provides additional insight into the best and worst aspects of different governments and forms of government.
I have always believed, and continue to believe that the US is the best country in the world to live in, but lately the margin is getting smaller and smaller (IMHO).
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:2, Insightful)
And what planet are you on? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you are telling me that the majority of newspapers -- which are municipal, county, and regional publications -- are liberal? It goes to follow, then, that massively-syndicated columnists like Dear Abby are also liberal. Does this mean that staunch conservatives in your strange corner of reality read the The New York Times for their daily dose of news?
========
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless of your politcal bias, regardless of who gets elected, ANYTHING that casts doubt on the democratic process is an anathema to the people's faith in their government and their country.
At least Gore Vidal contributed something meaningful to society over the course of his life.
Re:Demand a paper trail! (Score:2, Insightful)
Vidal Opposes BushCo: +100, Patriotic (Score:5, Insightful)
are not operating under Plan G, after you read this, you WILL believe
the U.S. is a dictatorship and implement Plan G:
[justresponse.net]
Despots in the Whitehouse
We are the patriots
How is it possible for the US to engage in
wars without the consensus of a large part of
the American people? Gore Vidal places the
question within a historical perspective that
reveals the remarkable foresight of Benjamin
Franklin
I belong to a minority that is now one of the smallest in the country and, with every day, grows smaller. I am a veteran of World War II. And I can recall thinking, when I got out of the Army in 1946, Well, that's that. We won. And those
who come after us will never need do this again. Then came the two mad wars of imperial vanity--Korea and Vietnam. They were bitter for us, not to mention for the so-called enemy. Next we were enrolled in a perpetual war against
what seemed to be the enemy-of-the-month club. This war kept major revenues going to military procurement and secret police, while withholding money from us, the taxpayers, with our petty concerns for life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.
But no matter how corrupt our system became over the last
century--and I lived through three-quarters of it--we still
held on to the Constitution and, above all, to the Bill of
Rights. No matter how bad things got, I never once
believed that I would see a great part of the nation--of we
the people, unconsulted and unrepresented in a matter of
war and peace-demonstrating in such numbers against an
arbitrary and secret government, preparing and conducting
wars for us, or at least for an army recruited from the
unemployed to fight in. Sensibly, they now leave much of
the fighting to the uneducated, to the excluded.
During Vietnam Bush fled to the Texas Air National Guard.
Cheney, when asked why he avoided service in Vietnam,
replied, "I had other priorities." Well, so did 12 million of us
sixty years ago. Priorities that 290,000 were never able to
fulfill.
So who's to blame? Us? Them? Well, we can safely blame
certain oil and gas hustlers who have effectively hijacked the
government from presidency to Congress to, most
ominously, the judiciary. How did they do it? Curiously, the
means have always been there. It took the higher greed
and other interests to make this coup d'Ttat work.
It was Benjamin Franklin, of all people, who saw our future
most clearly back in 1787, when, as a delegate to the
Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia, he read for the
first time the proposed Constitution. He was old; he was
dying; he was not well enough to speak but he had
prepared a text that a friend read. It is so dark a statement
that most school history books omit his key words.
Franklin urged the convention to accept the Constitution
despite what he took to be its great faults, because it might,
he said, provide good government in the short term. "There
is no form of government but what may be a blessing to
the people if well administered, and I believe farther that
this is likely to be well administered for a course of years,
and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done
before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to
need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
Think of Enron, Merrill Lynch, etc., of chads and butterfly
ballots, of Scalia's son arguing before his unrecused father
at the Supreme Court while unrecused Thomas sits silently
by, his wife already at work for the approaching Bush
Administration. Think, finally, of the electoral college, a piece
of dubious, antidemocratic machinery that Franklin
doubtless saw as a source of deepest corruption and
subsequent mischief for the Republic, as happened not only
in 1876 but in 2000.
Frankli
Re:the 10% (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:2, Insightful)
20 million Dittoheads must have at least some influence. That's 3 Rush Limbaugh listeners for every comment that has ever been posted to Slashdot. And, thanks to the Bush economic policy, there's more and more people with nothing better to do all day than sit around and listen to talk radio. 3 hours a day, 5 days a week of that drivel and people start to believe it. And that's not even counting Dr. Laura, Michael Savage, Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, etc.
Re:And what planet are you on? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is there such a thing as a real independent newspaper anymore? As far as I know they all got bought by big companies.
Re:Left vs. Right (Score:4, Insightful)
They may sound similar but they really aren't. Clinton lied about a personal sexual affair, like just about every married man would've. The right wing response was impeachment which was an insane overreaction designed to massively damage the Democratic party and help the Republican's win the next election which they did, by hook or crook. They got away with it because they controlled the House at the time. The founding fathers designed impeachement as a tool of last resort, not as a poltical tool to be used in such a petty manner.
Contrast this with Bush's big lie on Iraq where there was apparently an intentional campaign of deception to fabricate a case for a war. It led to tens of thousands of people, and hundreds of Americans, getting killed and 100's of billions of dollars disappearing in a quagmire. It may well lead to more attacks against the U.S. in the long run, not less, since most of the world is now inflamed against the U.S. and now views the U.S. as the biggest threat to a stable, peaceful world. It is also unfathomable how anyone thinks Iraq will be a stable pro Western democracy anytime soon . The majority in Iraq are Shia who will eventually vote for an Islamic republic, like Iran's. The Sunni and Kurd minorities are unlikely to ever tolerate Shia dominance. I doubt the Bush administration really thought any of this out past "shock and awe".
The Democratic response to Bush's big lie has been nothing but empty rhetoric since they are completely devoid of power at present. If the Republican's succeed in rigging or buying future elections, in stacking the Judiciary with right wingers and in doing away with the fillibuster in the Senate the last checks and balances the founding fathers designed to restrain them will be gone. Today's bizarre 30 hour session in the Senate is all about eliminating the last checks against their unrestrained power, the Senate fillibuster and a balanced judiciary.
It is true both political parties, or more likely all political parties are corrupt. But today's Republican party is going off the scale both in its fanaticism and its willingness to use any means necessary to take and hold power. The Republicans appear to be dedicated to a goal of a white male dominated, far right, fundementalist Christian global empire pandering to a plutocracy, small in number but vast in wealth. They also have control of an extremely powerful military, intelligence and police apparatus that can and may well be suppressing dissent at home and abroad.
Re:Well said Mr. Vidal. (Score:3, Insightful)
Please point me to a link to one recount effort by the press that would have resulted in a Gore victory in Florida.
Re:man with an agenda (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm suprised there are so many ultra-conservative, love it or leave it, our president - right or wrong, types on here. It'd make me say that Slashdot had been invaded by Ditto-heads.
It is very on-topic that these Electronic Voting proponents are connected to the Republicans. The Republicans who many people believe both cheated and unfairly took advantage of errors in the Florida election. The fact that these companies are very obviously Republican supporters, and that they have donated to the Republicans, goes together with the apparent corruption in that party and suggests that perhaps some of the insecurity of the electronic voting platforms (and the reason it's not generated a lot more noise in the government) is intentional.
The fact is that these companies publicly support the Republicans, and that the Republicans are the largest proponents of using these machines. The conclusions are your own, but an article that mention how one political party seems to be embracing flawed technology (which has been discussed here) seems on-topic.
Re:I hardly believe (Score:3, Insightful)
The label on my fire extinguisher says "Aim at the base of flames".
an idiot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Left vs. Right (Score:3, Insightful)
While it's true that they are often used as insults and inaccurate labels, they have a place. If the words didn't exist we'd invent some. If you have groups of things, be they people, animals, or even concepts, they'll get labelled. It's true even if the groups are fuzzy. While the labels can be harmful, they can prove useful tools to identify people with similar viewpoints.
Part of what your complaining about is simply groupthink and mindless obedience to a cause or organization. All of this can lead to highly divise politics where none of the sides are listening to each other. Getting rid of the labels won't get rid of the negative behavior.
And while there is some about of groupthink there, part of the reason for the disagreement isn't groupthink, but differing opinions on the issue; opinions that often happen to roughly align across these labels. This might point to groupthink, but it might point to a good set of labels that accurately divide common points of view.
For example, you cite the differing reactions to Clinton's lies about sexual behavior and the Bush administration's misleading behavior regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. That the two sides appear to flip-flop on the topic of lying isn't necessarily hypocritical, it could point to the two issues being different in their minds.
It's a bit crude, but "World's Smallest Political Quiz [theadvocates.org]" is an interesting way of sorting out the labels. It actually divides people into five labels Left/Liberal, Right/Conservative, Libertarian, Centrist, and Authoritarian. Using their guidelines a key distinction is how much government should meddle in ones private lives or economic lives. A liberal by thier definition would be someone who wants government involved economically, but not personally. A conversative by their definition would be the opposite.
By that definition to a liberal Clinton's deception is not a big detail because it's part of his private life while the misleading about Iraq's WMD is a big detail because ultimately war is about economics. The opposite would be true for a Conservative.
Now the Quiz's definition isn't perfect, but few definitions are. And in practice these crude definitions work fine. While someone identifies themselves as liberal, I know I'm more likely to share similar views on controversial issues than I am with a conservative. However, I'm certainly a free individual and I hold some opinions that are not traditionally liberal. There are some conservatives who views really resonate with me. But in general liberal summarizes, if a bit crudely, my views.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Do you want fries with that?"
"Do you want fries with that?"
"Do you want fries with that?"
"Do you want a CS degree with that?"
And next to no one is buying computers right now around here. And thanks to all this supercorp merging, this towns factory got baught by the competition just to close it down! All hail His Magesty Bush and his court's super spin cycled reports.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone has been happy to engage in personal attacks against Franken. What they haven't done is challenge his material. Why, because conservatives aren't interested in facts.
Unlike some (Bill O'Reilly) Al doesn't claim to be unbaised. I wouldn't say that his book "debunks" the myth of liberal media bias. But it does explain why it's a stupid thing to say in the first place.
The media is a business. They look out for their bottom line. I keep hearing about one poll where 80% of reporters voted for Clinton. Who gives a shit. They don't decide whats printed.
The owners and editors decide what is printed. They do what is in their own best interest. They have been a big friend to Bush since Bush has been a friend to them. The FCC de-regulation was a BIG help. Even better help was a war. WAR = Ratings!!!!!!
As you pan through the radio spectrum, you'll have a hard time finding any of those pinko liberals they love to bitch about. Search the number one news network, Fox any liberals their. Hardly. How about the major networks. The only one that hasn't sold old to being a corporate conservative shill is CBS.
The most telling fact of a liberal media myth is that real liberals HATE the media. You would think they would be pleased with the New York Times. Check out some REAL lefty liberal sites like Buzzflash.com and OpEdnews.com and my favorite DailyHowler.com. They hate the media even more than "conservatives" do.
As Al Franken said. Asking whether the media is liberal or conservative is like asking if Al Queda uses too much oil in their Hummus. The question really doesn't apply. They have their own agenda and it doesn't have SHIT to do ideology.
At the end of the day, their bias is revealed in accepting news articles written by third parties and think tanks. They don't sufficiently research their content. They go to press before they've checked their facts just to get scoops. They write stories to sell advertising.
The basic gist is that the media has lower standards for content. That is their bias, sloppy, cheap, profitable.