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?'."
He's a luddite, but a sharp luddite (Score:3, Interesting)
Vidal is one of America's sharpest social critics, although he only operates as a critic. He ran for office once but I suspect he would be a failure as a career politician despite his family ties.
Time for Open Source Voting Machines (Score:3, Interesting)
This simply is too important to allow hacked machines to spit out as answer that somebody pre-determined in a back-room deal.
We can do something about it now, or we can pay the consequences of an untrusted election system come next year. The choices are few, the ooportunities many. Write me off as stupid if you just don't give a rat's, but you will sooner or later.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:4, Interesting)
Paper trail for what?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Hah! Did it matter in the 2000 election in Florida?
The trail is still there -- is someone doing anything about it?
Bah crap! The precedent is already there. It could be the Dem party which does that the next time...
Its all the same in the end.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gore Vidal is an idiot (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe the correct answer to your question is mu [catb.org].
Re:Just another leftist whiner (Score:1, Interesting)
The real issue here is the voting macihnes. They do not work and are not able to be audited. I heard an interview with a person who was a precinct captain. They wanted to make sure the machines were working correctly so they wanted to cast some mock votes, like they used to. She was told they could not because the system is proprietary.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:2, Interesting)
Funny how you left Fox out, since that would bring it closer to 50%. BTW, where do these numbers come from? I'd guess a conservative book about the media, but I could be wrong.
BTW, having a 'liberal' media, is a whole lot better than 'totalitarian' media. But why am I trying, chances are that 'liberal' is such a connotated and evil word for you by now that actual thought concerning its use is problematic.
Also, those are public companies you've listed. Mind telling me the political affiliation of the majority of their stockholders?
Networks (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Must be Bush's fault (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't know either way ... (Score:3, Interesting)
We do, of course, have two American citizens (Padilla and Hamdi) declared as enemy combatants kept in Naval brigs, not charged with any crimes, not allowed access to lawyers, not allowed the right to remain silent, held indefinitely by fiat of W alone. But you're right, they're not at Gitmo. They're here in the US.
Vote!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well said Mr. Vidal. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thousands of innocent black and latino voters were prevented from voting. Gore "lost" by less than 600 votes.
Re:Why oh why (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:gore vidal: lost all touch with reality (Score:3, Interesting)
Though I am sure they do just what is necessary to not let you die.....
Half of his time he spent in Europe tough....
Actually those numbers, even though they look nice, don't paint an accureate picture.
Once people loose their unemployment benefits they also fall out of the statistic, so in essence it could just mean there are no further job losses, but not necessarily the creation of new ones.
Likewise, when the numbers were climbing, they were also understating.
In comparision: In Germany for example anybody who is without a job and because of this is on any kind of welfare is going to be counted in the stats, thus the numbers in Germany for example, tend to be higher.
Bush? (Score:1, Interesting)
Get your tinfoil hat ready, Gore.
Re:Vidal Opposes BushCo: +100, Patriotic (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm
The gist of it is Prescott Bush, George W's grandfather, was a business partner of the Thyssen and Flick families, who helped bankroll the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party from 1923-1942. Flick funded the S.S. and S.A. in their early years. Thyssen wrote a book "I Paid Hitler" describing his financial support for Hitler from 1923.
It is quite possible the Bush family helped make the rise of Hitler possible.
In 1942 the U.S. Government seized the assets of Union Bank, Seemless Steel and Holland American trading, all run by Prescott Bush, for the Harriman family, for being Nazi fronts which were at the time trading with the enemy. Among other things it appears Union bank was a front for Flick and the German Steel Trust which was the major manufacturer of steel and explosives for the Nazi war machine.
It kind of sounds like the Bush family were rather fond of totalitarian governments and were particularly fond of them in the 30's when the western democracies were in collapse and there was a lot of money to be made in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. They may well have endorsed the rise of Hitler as they saw it as a chance to make a lot of money banking and trading with Germany.
Re:How much press will it get, though? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sour grapes? (Score:3, Interesting)