Subject:
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Re: Two questions for the Conservatives and/or Republicans out there
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 9 Oct 2006 17:18:47 GMT
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Viewed:
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2069 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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Do you trust Diebold’s touchscreen-based voting machines to record an
accurate tally of votes?
Why?
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Why not, Dave!? There can’t be cheating if the machines could be rigged so
that it doesn’t know which candidates are under which button (if that is
your concern).
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That only assumes that the machine can’t rig it during the individual vote.
Once the votes are cast and the moderator goes to the machine, how do we
verify that Candidate A really got 7,500 votes and Candidate B really got
2,500?
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It would be like a double-blind study. Surely you aren’t implying
that the technology doesn’t exist to competently carry out the task
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Oh, I don’t doubt that it exists, but I’m close to 100% certain that
technology likewise exists to mess with the totals invisibly during the whole
process
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Or, how about this: I enter my SS#, I enter my vote. That way there is a
permanent record of how I voted. But then, that could be seen as an
invasion of privacy, so the permanent record thing might not be such a hot
idea (except for threatening elementary children of course;-)
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That’s not a permanent record, though, unless the machine produces a
verifiable, certified paper receipt. Lacking that, and lacking a way to
re-verify one’s vote after the fact, the machines shouldn’t be trusted.
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I guess the bottom line is whether one trusts our government.
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I don’t think that’s the bottom line at all! The issue is whether or not one
trusts a secretive, Conservative-friendly corporation that refuses to submit
its machines or software for objective testing, and whose machines and
software have been repeatedly demonstrated to be highly vulnerable to
undetectable and invisible hacking and alteration.
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I know it is crazy to do so, but at the same time, it is crazy not to have
a certain level of it. For instance, giving our military all of the stuff
that can blow up the earth and trusting that they don’t actually do it.
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Time will tell. I mean, a good many parents trusted our esteemed legislators
to serve as responsible mentors in the Congressional “Page Program,” and look
where that got us.
Trust the government only as far as you can verify it. Anything that goes on
behind closed doors (such as pretty much the entirety of the Bush
administration) must be suspect. More than any other process of government,
the electoral process must be transparent and subject to objective review at
every step.
If, when the votes are counted in November, it turns out that Democrats took
every contested seat in the House and Senate, would you say “Diebold counted
everything accurately” or would you call for an investigation? Well, too bad
in that case, because Diebold has fought to ensure that no such investigation
is possible.
Dave!
Crazy to think that the Liberal is arguing for greater transparency and the
Conservative is arguing for secrecy. These are strange days, indeed!
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Well, I am not beholden to Diebold for anything. It seems to me that the bottom
line is that you don’t trust them, not the equipment they produce. Companies
will always have some bias, either left or right; that is a given. What doesn’t
follow is that because of that bias, they will act nefariously to benefit their
political POV. What is more likely is that they will act nefariously to “keep
the gig”. The solution would be to keep the process competitive so that the
incentive is accurate performance, or face losing the contract.
I like your idea of transparency, but OTOH, I can understand why Diebold is
reluctant to give up IP (every company would balk IMO). In thinking about the
electronic process of voting; yeah, there are opportunities for skullduggery,
but surely those same opportunities and ten times more currently exist and
have always existed. We have just always assumed that things worked out
fairly. What happened in FL in 2000 is probably a lot more common than we care
to realize.
Whatever process we use, the interred will, in all probability, continue to vote
(at least in Chicago, anyway)
JOHN
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