OT: Driving a car -> Voting Machines

[Jim Herrmann]

For all the low down on voting machine irregularities and ballot 
tampering, check out http://blackboxvoting.com/.  I've got a really bad 
feeling about 2004.  When they control the voting machines and the 
media, our democracy is doomed, which I think has already happened.  :-(

Open source software voting machines with a printed paper trail is the 
only way to proceed with electronic voting.  There.  That brings it on 
topic.  ;-)

Peace,
Jim

Rick Franklin wrote:

>
>> Well it goes beyond just not being secure. There are several issues 
>> involved.
>> Among others they have been found to be not functioning, have needed 
>> to be
>> fixed during an election, have had fixes applied and not had the 
>> fixes certified by
>> the local elections board, have taken out machines during voting and 
>> applied patches
>> at Diebold company locations, there is no paper trail. There are also 
>> indications
>> that some election results are either invalid, recorded improperly, 
>> or have been erased
>> by people both in the election board and in Diebold employees. There 
>> was even one
>> machine that recorded a *negative* vote of something like 2000 
>> for(against?) Gore in
>> Florida in the 2000 election. I've seen lots of different types of 
>> voting methods
>> in my 25 years of voting, but I've never seen an option to vote 
>> against one candidate.
>> How does one cast a negative vote? Oh yeah and the CEO of Diebold is 
>> quite proud of saying he will deliver elections to Republican 
>> candidates. IIRC
>>
>> Sorry for the rant, I guess someone pushed a button. ;)
>>
>>  
>>
> From automobiles to voting machines, a worthy OT rant. While mildly 
> amused with the thought that the folks who brought the world the BSOD
> and other "crashes" could have their product creep into our 
> automobiles, the electronic voting issue has had my more serious 
> attention lately.
>
> While looking at a few of the Slashdot references, I found this 
> initiative in the open-source community:
>
>> http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2754
>
>