Marxist Hacker 42's Journal: Why there will never be any evidence

I've been avoiding writing in my journal until my missed deadline for the TechnoSolidarity website is fixed- but I now realize that's silly, considering the reasons that it isn't online yet (illness, mainly, and a lack of funds for the distributed setup, plus I've yet to find good blog software that I trust thanks to the 503 errors on the last update of slashcode). Plus, this showed up and it's far more important to how to fix the problems of a week ago. Political solutions are fine, but if the underlying technology of our voting system isn't sound, then there is no reason to trust either major political party OR the process OR the continuation of a Constitutional Government.

For those who still believe that Diebold machines are a good base for our political system, Bev Haris and Howard Dean show you EXACTLY how to take the step beoyond initial reverse social engineering to how to hack an election. The GEMS system she hacked is the back end of all three types of Diebold voting systems: Optical Scan, Punch Card, and Touchscreen. At least in the first two you can recount- but given this hack, and the way our recount laws are set up, who would call for a recount if say, the winner was more than 100,000 votes ahead? And given this method, wouldn't a team of hackers EASILY be able to get the RAS passwords and put one candidate far more than that threshold ahead, without any trace?

Like I said before- this isn't a reason to overturn the past election. But it is most certainly a reason for each and every one of us who care about EITHER having a corruption-free Constitiutional Republic or realizing the dream of actual Democratic Freedom in the United States to take a step back and ask the question: Should any single corporation be allowed to count votes in any state in the union?

Vote early, vote often

[richie2000]

As a European, it amazes me that the superpower once known for it's stance on democracy could so totally mess up not one, but two elections in a row.

This is not rocket science.

Re:Vote early, vote often

[tomhudson]

... could so totally mess up not one, but two elections in a row.

Actually, at least 3 elections (there were the mid-term elections as well). And there weill be more mid-term elections in 2 years.

Now, what are the odds that "the fix" will be in on those?

Makes me glad I'm living in Canada. Also makes me want to help out by signing up here [marryanamerican.ca]. Tempted ... current stats for "I am a male looking for a female" : 595 Profiles Matching Your Criteria. Not bad for something that started off as a joke.

Re:Vote early, vote often

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I am giving it about 100% that the midterms will be stolen as well- and about 25-75 that by 2008, Bush will have been crowned dictator for life.

Re:Vote early, vote often

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Depends on what you mean by "democracy" and "elections". For one- the United States is not now, and has never been a democracy, it's a constitutional representative government with most of the representatives chosen by popular vote (ideally). Secondly, for the past 140 years or so, the candidates for election have pretty much all been chosen by the corporations- so elections were already the choice of corporate puppet #1 and his lookalike corporate puppet #2. Given this, the only difference in the last t

Perfect fit for GPL

[macrealist]

I am not a big fan of the GPL, but the one case that it really makes sense is in a democratic voting system. It should be a requirement that the software and the system (process, not hardware) that is used for voting and counting votes should be open and always open. Democratic voting systems are not the place for a heartless, profit driven corporation.

Re:Perfect fit for GPL

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Completely agreed. In fact, all three major voting companies not only are closed source (there is a fourth, open source system, available already- but it isn't used in the United States), but I found out this morning in a guest-worker watch newsletter that all three use non-citizen programmers. We don't (or at least aren't supposed to) allow non-citizens to vote- why the heck do we trust creating our voting systems to a bunch of H-1bs that have no loyalty to our constitution at all? The only possible rea