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Subject: 
Re: Question for the Conservatives out there
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:26:19 GMT
Viewed: 
1645 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:

Well, when I first mentioned the hypothetical, it was *my* hypothetical, and now
that the powers-that-be are addressing it, I'm becoming more concerned.  My
reasons for this are several:

1.  Special elections tend to favor the Right wing, due to the
    fact that Conservatives are (generally) more easily mobilized
    for voter turnout at off-schedule electiosn
2.  The Supreme Court, which would likely be dragged into the
    adjudication of the election's results, has been demonstrated
    already to be very friendly to Bush re: election results.
3.  The fact that Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft hit the stage with a new
    "be afraid of everything/no specific information" every time an
    inconvenient piece of news arises against Bush makes me fear that
    some kind of scaremongering is almost certain
4.  Diebold, which heavily favors Right-leaning interests, holds an
    unprecedented and mysteriously un-scrutinized level of power in
    the upcoming election, and the need for "fast and reliable"
    electronic voting methods may be presented as all the more vital
    in a tense and dangerous election-day environment
5.  Additionally, if there's a largescale power-outage or disruption
    of internet security, Diebold is vulnerable in a way that
    conventional hanging-chad ballots never have been.  And if 10 or
    100 or 1,000,000 pro-Kerry votes are lost due to the resulting
    "technical difficulties," what will be the recourse?

While I'm at it, why does anyone believe that a so-called "paper trail" will
improve the veracity of digital voting machines?  It seems obvious to me that
anyone who knows how to program one of these machine can certainly rig it to
give a false paper receipt.  And even if such a fraud or glitch should occur,
what happens?  Are all e-vote ballots declared void?

Interestingly, it appears that the GOP has decided that e-voting is so
unreliable that it's encouraging Florida Republicans to use their absentee
ballots instead.

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/07/con04321.html

So this is all becoming less and less hypothetical as we go along.  Hmm...

Dave!



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Question for the Conservatives out there
 
(...) I've been against e-voting from very first moment I heard about it, because the closer it gets to being done over the internet, the closer it gets to the point where either a hacker can directly tweak the results, or a timed virus can prevent (...) (20 years ago, 5-Aug-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
  "In order to do a proper count one has to know how many people voted in the first place."
 
(...) Postal votes have been used in the UK for yonks. However, they have been used recently as a tool to improve voter turnout. This has led to three problems: Party workers have been "assisting" voters with the paperwork. Within some ethnic (...) (20 years ago, 6-Aug-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Question for the Conservatives out there
 
(...) Well, when I first mentioned the hypothetical, it was *my* hypothetical, and now that the powers-that-be are addressing it, I'm becoming more concerned. My reasons for this are several: 1. Special elections tend to favor the Right wing, due to (...) (20 years ago, 13-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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