Did We Ask for These Machines and WHY are we getting them..?

[TM7]

New electronic voting machines, 90% made by Diebold, may have a few problems. Who is Diebold? And why are we getting these machines? IT guys please comment...
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http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/how-to-steal-an-election-with-a-diebold-machine-200693.php
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................TM7

[WmRoy]

Actually, one of my clients is a Vice President for this company.  I think there's just as much danger of tampering with paper ballots as there is with electronics......... of course it maybe faster with electronics, but the point is that NO SYSTEM is 100% secure................ best to toss out the kool-aid it's getting stale........

[ironglow]

  While I don't subscribe to any conspiracy theories concerning voting machines, I do think we don't need them near as much as some folks think we do..
    If a person is so stupid that they can't poke a chad clean out.. as the directions tell them to do, then their vote may as well be a crapshoot anyway..because they are not likely " voting intelligently' anyway..
 
  With this election, if a lib loses. they are going to cry "machine cheating"..

  A paper ballot, properly marked is hard to argue with..improperly/vaguely marked..throw it out !

[pills]

who is using these things? when you say did we ask for them who is the we? Our church is a polling place and they use paper ballots.

[nabob]

Paper ballots are easy to tamper with. Heck, Tammany Hall was famous for that! And as for throwing them out, well, that's perhaps what helped elect Kennedy President - paper ballots were found floating in the Chicago river, as I remember. They were marked for Nixon.

Got to hand it to the Dems on one matter, though. When they fix an election, the dead walk. Seriously - some of the people that voted in Chicago under Richard Daly's tenure were people that had been dead for years!! Crude but cheap. Now when the Republicans fix an election, they buy the votes they need. I guess I'd have to hand it to the Dems for figuring out how to put the fix in on the cheap.

[countryroads]

TM7,

My wife believes as you do, that the government is out to impose a dictatorship on the people while trying to convince us that we are free.  She is a left wing democrat, as I suspect you are, and she hates this country, as I suspect you do.

The other day, the United States of America passed the 300,000,000 mark vis a vis population.  Do you suppose that as the country becomes more populous, and ballots become more convoluted (all of the various propositions, referenda, etc.) that we can continue doing things the way that things were done in the late 18th century?  You can't be serious in your assertion that taking advantage of technological changes is something that this country needs to avoid just because there are a few dimwits out there that think that the change is designed to reduce our freedoms, can you???

Deleted by Graybeard. It's not gonna take many more personal attacks of that nature to have your status changed to EX MEMBER. Follow the rules or be gone. GB

thanks

[WmRoy]

Actually, one of my clients is a Vice President for this company.  I think there's just as much danger of tampering with paper ballots as there is with electronics......... of course it maybe faster with electronics, but the point is that NO SYSTEM is 100% secure................ best to toss out the kool-aid it's getting stale........

OKay, there's your words now explain what you said, i.e. "there's just as much danger of tampering with paper ballots as there is with electronics".....?..?...?

My understanding of the owner of this company is that he is a right winger dyed in the wool republicrant, Bush $ pledger, religious zealot, etc. ...sort of like you.  Not the kind of guy you want designing impartial voting paraphenalia.  He's a client..?? What ya do..?? weed his garden or something..?? 

.................TM7

Gee TM what part of "there's just as much danger of tampering with paper ballots as there is with electronics".....?..?...? don't you understand?  Seems pretty obvious to me?

And your reading comprehension is lacking........... I said a Vice Pres. of the Company was a client not the owner.............. and I'm a Professional Artist not a gardener............... go drink some Kool-Aid, I think you need the sugar .....................

[no guns here]

Personally, I think we should capitalize on the technology and go to a full democracy.  Every month you would have one voting day and all bills would have to be voted on by the public.  Of course that would get rid of the hundred and thousand page bills.  They would have to be one-pagers that could be read by average joe, not just lawyers.  You would vote and a receipt would print out for your records, showing your vote.  Then at the end of the year, you would get an accounting of your yearly votes.  That would help curb any "discrepancies".  Quit paying these yokels in DC for 40 years of "service" and not getting anything done.

ngh

[Matt]

no_guns you have a different view... one I don think I have heard before...

But folks I know too much about technology to for one second think that these electronic voting machines are safer to our democracy than paper. After ever heard of the paper trail? It is the thing that gets most people caught...

If use the idea of an end of the election confirmation would make things a little safer but still it is just too easy to manipulate...

countryroads: find your rock and crawl back under it...

Matt

[WmRoy]

A paper trail is only good if it's the ORIGINAL paper trail............... lot's of Bars out there have great paper trails, they just aren't the original paper trail.............. just because it's high-tech doesn't make it more tamperable then low-tech, it just means it can be tampered with faster............. no system can 100% stop those who wish to cheat......... I just find it hilarious that folks claim the Republicans cheat when the Democrats have been so very blantant about it for YEARS....... I think you all have fallen for a very old trick...........

[magooch]

In these parts, we do all of our voting on mail-in paper ballots.  No system is perfect and I'm pretty sure some of the precincts in the state aren't to be trusted with any voting method, but I like the convenience of the mail-in.  Oh yeah, and the best part is, I get to vote twice, because my wife lets me fill hers out.

[S.S.]

I too am in the IT field and for the last few years I have cringed
every time I have cast a vote (national and local).
Electronic voting machines are extremely dangerous in my opinion.
Sure, Paper ballots can be tampered with as easily as anything else,
but Electronic voting can be tampered with on a much more massive scale
in almost an instant ! People should have been better informed about
"Hanging Chad" and we would not be in this mess now with voting.
I am sure that programs are being written all over the world as we speak
(or type that is) To either hack, Infect or otherwise damage our voting process.
I have not looked, but I would wager that the Source code that runs the voting
machines is available somewhere on the web. Get that code, de-compile it, and Vulnerabilities
will probably be easy to find. I have been in the IT field since 1997 and other than
Equifax, I know of no company who has not been hacked. Equifax just might not
be admitting it though. Where I work We have just about every type of security system
on the market from Network Defence programs to state of the art programmable switches
and we still took a minor Hack about a year ago. A Carnivore system was able to track him down,
But being after the fact, the damage was already done. The internet and wide area networks are very dangerous places. I would not advise doing ANY transactions of a personal nature over the net
This includes any Bill paying or banking or anything that has any really personal information.
This especially includes Voting !  I do not care what kind of security you have on computer systems,
Somebody wrote the code and I would bet they know how to bypass it. Just about every computer program that I know of that requires a password has a universal admin. password
hard coded into it ! I see no reason why the voting machines would be any different.
He who has this code could easily be made unbelievably wealthy by selling it to the right person.
Imagine computers and E-Voting machines as being a big Genetics experiment.
Sure it may cure some of the worlds problems, But it may also create an uncontrollable monster by accident ! I see e-voting as one of these monsters ! It just has not started to scratch and bite yet !!

[copilot001]

for those interested
in canada we unfold a piece of paper with the candidates listed and a circle to the right of the name.
put an X in the circle opposite your choice and fold it up and dump in ballot box...simple low tech voting...works every time.
but i still wonder how some turkeys get ellected

[nabob]

"Personally, I think we should capitalize on the technology and go to a full democracy."

Here's a little story about that: back during the Pelopennesian War, Athens fought Sparta. Athens demanded that its neighbors ally with them against Sparta. When Mytilene refused and declared neutrality, the Athenian democracy voted to put every single person on the island of Mytilene to death. A couple of galleys were sent out to accomplish the deed.

The next day, cooler heads prevailed and the death vote lifted. Another galley was sent to try to catch up with the first ones. They did just as the first ones were docking in Mytilene, averting an atrocity.

Later, though, Mytilene would be offered the same choice - join or die - and this time, no one  saved them when they chose to remain neutral.

It was exactly the Athenian failures with full democracy that led our founding fathers to establish a representational democracy. They, at least, knew their history.

[williamlayton]

To answer the original question.
Diebold is a company which is over a hundred years old. It has made safes-money and fire, bank vaults, doors and fire doors-along with banking equipment and business/office equipment as long as it has existed.
I remember the 13 ballots of dead people which elected LBJ in Duval county.
Voting fraud is as old as voting and politicians--it will never die and we can never outsmart these type folks----read-NEVER!
Computers are to make it easier to vote and more accurate. I barely can turn this thing on much less make use of most of its functions.
The least smart of us folks have a right to vote. I take exception to the staement that if they are not smart enough to punch a hole they are not smart enough to vote- This statement smacks of lack of common sense and whoever believes this should not be able to vote.
There is no fool-proof system. People make mistakes or do not understand poorly given instructions.
I find a great deal lacking in the instructions given on the new machines. I, myownself, was most confused by the machine and the verbal instructions given the first time around.
Simple--my 5 year old granddaughter can use a computer with greater skills than can I but she cannot compete with me in common sense--yet.
i would suggest that we can use both for the aid of us overthehillers.
Blessings

[WylieKy]

I do not know how these machines operate, but it looks to me like they could be the best of both worlds.  If they are not "online" they could not be hacked from the outside.  What I mean by that is that if they are freestanding machines that simply tabulate the votes and provide the totals, with no connection to the "net" then a person would have to hack each individual machine.  Since the votes are tabulated and not handled, no one could interfere with the votes themselves.  With a prevote inspection they could test the machines and make sure they are accurately reflecting the votes.  This would not prevent a largescale government conspiracy, but then, what will?

WylieKy

[ironglow]

  The interesting thing is that the same whiners that complained about " hanging chads" and got the high-tech machines in place ....are the same people that are now whining about how the new devices can be rigged..

  I believe if the whiners candidates get elected you will hear no complaints after the election..but if their candidate loses, they have already tilled the ground of discontent.

   Then, be ready to start hearing the whining start all over again.

   Some folks just can't take NO for an answer !!...LOL