Is this how the Republicans have stolen and will try again to steal elections?

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I just knew that Max Cleland didn't really lose

gabbneb (gabbneb), Wednesday, 24 September 2003 04:11 (twenty-two years ago)

No surprises.

Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, 24 September 2003 04:38 (twenty-two years ago)

does this mean that i have to take back all the mean things that i said about georgians* after saxby chambliss "won"?

(*cinnablount and trife excepted from aforementioned "mean things," of course -- but trife only because he prob. didn't bother to vote at all)

Little Big Macher (llamasfur), Wednesday, 24 September 2003 04:46 (twenty-two years ago)

A Diebold update/roundup, via the Agonist, which has been all over this. I'm really paranoia man these days, but doesn't it seem increasingly rational?

gabbneb (gabbneb), Sunday, 28 September 2003 18:10 (twenty-two years ago)

make that The Agonist

gabbneb (gabbneb), Sunday, 28 September 2003 18:14 (twenty-two years ago)

two weeks pass...
does this mean that i have to take back all the mean things that i said about georgians* after saxby chambliss "won"?

now it does

gabbneb (gabbneb), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 21:18 (twenty-two years ago)

(largely speculation, but) it gets worse

gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 17 October 2003 06:31 (twenty-two years ago)

roy barnes = gray davis of georgia (cept with less friends), any remotely competent campaign coulda taken him out and sonny perdue's campaign was remotely competent. cleland got caught in the crossfire, perdue-chambliss synergy generator beyond ralph reed's wildest dreams.

cinniblount (James Blount), Friday, 17 October 2003 07:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Barnes didn't have near the legion of enemies that Davis did. Well, the teacher's union is very formidable, but still, Barnes was not seeing approval ratings in the 20s.

These conspiracy articles on Diebold--all tied into the owner being a Republican donor, mainly--are alarming only in the fact that voter fraud is not going to be eliminated by a non-emotional computer. The reason the national press corps has not grabbed onto this story is because all the conclusionary aspects of the story are based on circumstantial evidence. And in case you don't know, the people who originally came up with the conspiracy theory have been working their asses off faxing news releases for the past year. They've got a vested interest in a matter which is just as suspicious as the owner of Diebold.

Furthermore, it clouds the obvious: voter fraud is legendary in the US but nobody gave much of a shit about it until the incumbent vice president had a shitty campaign and got beaten by a dingbat Texan. Nobody seemed to mind that St. Louis or Chicago were ignoring voting laws, nobody seems to care that every big city purges voting rolls every year without almost no oversight--well, there is oversight but since most big cities are run by Democrats I guess maybe it's not such a big deal. And now, we're supposed to get suspicious just because a couple of elections in Georgia were blown by pollster--what about the polling in California that showed Davis having a chance?

There is a huge problem with the Diebold machines and that should be a huge story. But giving it play just because your team lost the game is kind of desperate. If we're going to be reasonably suspicious of whomever owns Diebold then can we be reasonably suspicious of the Democrat-controlled voter boards all across Florida? If we're going to go after voter fraud, let's go after it as a legitimate issue and not some political football.

don weiner, Friday, 17 October 2003 10:47 (twenty-two years ago)

It's not just about Republican ownership of Diebold. It's about needing paper verification of electronic voting. It's not (or shouldn't be) just Democrats who care.

Sam J. (samjeff), Friday, 17 October 2003 15:18 (twenty-two years ago)

God I hate touchscreens. They don't work for library catalogs or other applications, and really really really should not be used for voting.

j.lu (j.lu), Friday, 17 October 2003 15:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Leaving aside the question of the party-affiliation of the company ownership, there is still the very real and relevant question of just how secure and reliable are these machines? Paper ballots may be clunky - but they don't just disappear into the ether because someone presses the wrong button. On top of that, you have the very disturbing prospect of the entire counting process being entrusted to one private corporation with no independent verification - on the premise that opening up the "black box" would reveal trade secrets. I wouldn't want to trust any one company to that extent, no matter what the party affiliation of the owners is.

o. nate (onate), Friday, 17 October 2003 21:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Someone has been playing rough, repeatedly forcing blackboxvoting.com off the Web through dirty tactics. (Meanwhile, Diebold sued the ISP and had blackboxvoting.org, its sister site, shut down weeks ago, for posting internal memos that revealed Diebold's awareness and approval of the wide-open software security hole.)

http://www.talion.com/blackboxvoting.org.htm

Sam J. (samjeff), Friday, 17 October 2003 21:54 (twenty-two years ago)


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