Florida Voting Machine Logs Reveal Anomalies 819
boot1780 writes "Having 'successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election,' Black Box Voting reports that the 'internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.' Besides the date discrepancies, they claim to have discovered countless other errors and anomalies, including a case of one voting machine being 'powered down 128 times during the election'." Given the findings here, can we have a do-over?
Random number (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Take back our elections (Score:1, Interesting)
(spelling corrected, remember i before e)
I do. I am not happy to have GWB elected but I honestly think he won the majority of the vote in this election. You fail to take into account that the majority of this country was pro war at the time of the election. Just because we had a very vocal anti-war sentiment does not mean that sentiment represented the opinion of most people.
GWB won the election. It sucks, he continues to cause damage to the USA that will take years to repair but he did win. My biggest hope from his victory is that most of the people who voted for him will see the error of their ways and the next time we have an election between a douche and a shit sandwich, they will choose the lesser evil rather then the evil with the better rhetoric.
I think GWB has guaranteed us a democrat in the white house in 2008. Perhaps we can start making this country great again.
By the way, as a historical reference, in the history of this country there has never been an incumbent president defeated when running for a second term when the elections were held during war time.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Two words (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody can join the Democratic party. It doesn't mean they belong there.
Re:Oh, quitcher whinin' (Score:4, Interesting)
Sequoia can't even build machines that pass the federal standards, and you're blaming the local volunteer operators? Funny how whenever these black box voting machines "just don't work", they error in favor of republicans.
Re:No National Voting System? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Stop whining - indeed. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a great point! While I think Kerry is a democrat who is on par with the rest of his party's values, etc., Bush is WAY out of line with what the republican party was known for - and what longtime republican voters were assuming.
When I think traditional republican, I think personal privacy, constitutional protection, fiscal conservatism, and social conservatism. But Bush, who got all those always-vote-republican votes, has completely departed from those first three key traditional republican values!
I wouldn't mind so much if traditional republicans were in power, but the Republican party has been hijacked. Just like they used Colin Powell's reputation to trick people into believing them, they're using the Republican party to push their own selfish, money-driven agendas instead of what the Republican party used to be about and what voters were expecting.
Longtime republicans should be careful who they're voting for in the coming elections. You can't just trust the (R) next to a name anymore.
Re:Take back our elections (Score:2, Interesting)
As a matter of fact, I don't believe that it was fixed. I'm sure I'm in the vast majority on the liberal bastion that is Slashdot, however.
That said, between the warrantless wiretaps and the plan to let a UAE-based company run our ports (why that sort of thing isn't mandatorily domestic in the first place is beyond me), I'm almost regretting voting for Bush. In fact, had the Democrats chosen to put forward a moderate candidate in '04 (Lieberman, anyone?), I probably would have voted for him instead. Too bad I had to vote against Kerry.
But as far as the conspiracy theories whirling around, here's one for you to chew on:
If the election was fixed, perhaps it was fixed by Hillary Clinton. (Stay with me now!) If Kerry had won in '04, Hillary would have had to wait until '12 to make a serious effort at running. Besides, what better outgoing president to launch a presidential campaign off of than Bush? She's already got the ultra-left Howard Dean running the DNC, so compared to him, even she seems moderate, and given the way the current administration has got the moderate vote up in arms, she's practically a shoe-in to win in '08 now.
Seems unlikely? Sure. But no more unlikely than the election being fixed for any other reason, especially considering that there's been no substantiated evidence of willful fraud.
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Heres a nice article I wrote [galwayadvertiser.ie] on that very issue, and this got mass media publication baby, not just a blog. Ireland removed the voting machines by the way.
Re:Take back our elections (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we've passed that point. The port scandal is gonna get bigger and bigger, and the consequences this November could be catastrophic for the Republican party. Die hards like Rush might want to pretend it's no big deal, but when you have the House Speaker and the Senate Majority leader both coming out (strongly) against it, that's not a good sign.
I was really hoping Condi would run in '08. But now there's no way I'd vote for anyone associated with this administration. Especially since it turns out she was on the committee that approved this abomination in the first place.
The task would be much simpler if there was an alternative to the Republicans in power who could be trusted to tell the truth. But quite frankly, I don't think the Democrats fit that bill well enough. They need some major changes before they can take back their base - the average working class American.
I'd love to see a new Federalist party form. One based on supporting a free market like the Libertarians, but without their abhorrence of everything military. Or just good ol' fashioned Lincoln-Reagan Republicanism (strong in war, magnaminous in victory, supporting free markets and free trade, that kind of thing).
Think I'll expand on these thoughts in my new blog later today.
Re:Uhhh... (Score:2, Interesting)
Incompetent is a difficult claim to make, but from my experience, probably the best explanation for why these systems are so poor.
Many of us here work in environments where software is developed with respect to CMMI, security is considered from the beginning in the design, and numerous methods are used to assess, audit and verify the systems performance, reliability and security.
Yet most of the election systems just don't develop software this way. If you are involved in an election systems purchasing project, I would recommend you ask about things like:
- explain your software development methodology.
- what is your CMMI level?
- what is your in-house security audit program?
- how often are your systems penetration tested? by whom? and how?
- what are the security qualifications of your in-house experts? and your consultants?
Without naming names, I am aware of one of the largest election system companies that does not do any of the above. They said they see no need for security audit, penetration testing, security design, etc. The reason? "We use Microsoft operating systems and that is their responsibility to take care of. We apply patches as soon as we get them."
Absolutely unbelievable. I didn't know where to begin to explain the problems in this belief. So please, if you are buying election systems, don't buy systems from vendors like this (and mind you, this firm was one of the larger ones and not Diebold).
Re:Stop whining - indeed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. That's the Republican party that I signed on with. I'm not a big John McCain fan - yeah, I'm one of those people who thinks campaign donations are speech and shouldn't be limited - but he's far closer to my ideal than Bush Jr.
I agree with your message wholeheartedly and think we need to get it out more: our current "leadership" is not representative of the core beliefs of the majority of Republican voters. They is Republican in name only. Please do not take their words and actions as having anything to do with the rest of us.
Re:Stop whining - indeed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Take back our elections (Score:3, Interesting)
What's really disturbing (Score:1, Interesting)
I call bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
>They are not going to do something if they will get caught.
What about the ones who think they're not going to get caught [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Take back our elections (Score:2, Interesting)
Quite a shame that honorable service towards ones country can be casually denigrated by anonymous cowards. I don't think Kerry was a particularly great candidate, but this attack is the lowest kind of cowardly irony there is.
Find the courage to sign your name next time.
Re:What's new... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Caution in your Commentary (Score:1, Interesting)
When nobody can proove it either way, then it becomes an illegitamate election. This isn't a single insance of "anomaly's" either mind you; there have been hundreds, including the CEO of Diebold and major investors in Diebold mysteriously winning Senatorial and Representative elections. Remember those E-mails that were stolen from Diebolds systems? Those e-mails documented Diebold actually communicating with its staff on how to build in backdoors into their system; they're still available on gnutella if you search There was also a security researcher who testified infront of congress whom had his program he made to throw several exploits at a diebold machines used in an actual election.
It isn't a fallacy of logic to believe that Bush could rig a few key states and swing an election, twice.
Fradulent? I'd say incompetant to the point that fraudulence becomes fairly obvious. You can only say "Oops, I made a mistake" so many times before those mistakes begin to seem like they're done on purpose.
Re:Democratic Socialism vs. Republican Facism (Score:3, Interesting)
But really, it's a "choose your poison" scenario. I personally would prefer to vote the "no poison, please" ticket.
Minnisota, Wisconsin, Ohio (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the way the system works.
Democrates have traditionally cheated by multiple voting. When Republicans try to do anything about this they cry 'disenfrachisment'. Hence the continued lack of ID requirements to vote.
Democratic dirty hands also explain the lack of real investigation. Both sides know they don't want their shanannigans exposed.