Thanks Lissa, let the games begin!

Reasons NOT TO VOTE FOR DEMS

Reason Number 1

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is said to be determined to replace her (Jane Harman) with Alcee Hastings, the former federal judge who was impeached by the House for bribery and convicted and removed from office by the Senate.

It is incomprehensible that a party would even consider putting an individual with that history atop the House Intelligence Committee, yet desire to be seen as capable of defending America from her enemies.

When you have something intelligent to say on the subject get back to me... I won't hold my breath.

Reasons NOT TO VOTE FOR DEMS

Reason Number 2


Kennedy Linked With The Soviets?
That can't be ... they don't make Scotch. Do you get the significance of this? If true, Kennedy should be taken out and shot ... as opposed to being given one this time around.

This is freaking outrageous.

Paul Kengor, unearthed a sensational document from the Soviet archives. That document is a memo regarding an offer made by Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts via former Senator John Tunney, both Democrats, to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, USSR, Yuri Andropov, in 1983. The offer was to help the Soviet leadership, military and civilian, conduct a PR campaign in the United States as President Ronald Reagan sought re-election.

Reasons not to vote republican't lamebraned fools like National Inquirer reading Just one moron

The Only Reason You Need NOT TO VOTE FOR REPUBS

Because JOM in on their side

Thanks Roger, now if someone could comment on the article, which is well documented and factual?

Reason Number 3 - The Dems are already making excuses for loosing elections! Pathetic party of idiots!

"two thirds of voters believe that computer hackers or people working for candidates will deliberately manipulate the elections results."

More proof of the mental istability of the looney left!

there are over 40 links quoting everyone from CNN to the Christian Science Monitor in this article.

Now an intelligent discussion is hoped for...

not expected

But hoped for

istability? you have room to talk! Vote Democratic, they can spell!

[Edited] The reality is this is the same crap that has been going on for the last two elections when the Dumbofucks have dead people and illegals voting its a fair election if they loose its voter fraud...

A pathetic party of mentally unstable loons!!!

[Personal attack deleted]

Reasons NOT TO VOTE FOR DEMS


Reason Number 4

Dumbocratic Position on Terror

"er...ummmm....hmmmm...oh yea Blame Bush"

Jost keep going-I've written an intelligent, well researched and thought out article, you have done nothing but make smartass remarks.

Who do you think looks better
Me or you?

Reasons NOT TO VOTE FOR DEMS

Reason Number 4 - They are pathetic liars and misstate the truth...The author [Edited] states that the Republicans have "an obsession bordering on fetish with flag burning. "

Guess what he left out - The QUEEN OF THE DUMBOCRATS "Hillary Clinton Co-Sponsored the Anti-Flag Burning Bill"

Hmm I guess to some posters in here the truth of the facts dont matter...

gee that last one was the 5th reason,,,

Reasons NOT TO VOTE FOR DEMS

Reason Number 6

To quote the "Typist" - "Is it time to have the United Nations keep an eye on our elections?"

This is again the same fringe loon-line that believes that the UN is needed in US elections...a bunch of third world thugs...hey isnt that the base of the Dumbocrats!

Jet..pay no attention to the Limbaugh wanna-be with the rabid lies that would sound dumb coming from a syphillis addled autistic crack whore...

in actuality, i found your Article to be pretty good Reporting, plenty of links to shwo your Proofs, and your marking it "Opinion" gives you editorial leeway...

there's a video of folks at Princeton hacking a Diebold in under a minute ... much less the newest revelations of fuck ups in Alaska and Maryland.. or some goodstuff in the latest offerings from ZDnet.com

plenty of technical proofs out there, and you linked to solid ones to back your opinions

could be why so many states are seeing up to a tenfold increase in absentee ballot requests...

we will see...

Excelsior?

Gonzo---Rush who??? Gee let the left wing Circle Jerk Begin!!! A real left wing Bukake!

This is a pretty funny line "could be why so many states are seeing up to a tenfold increase in absentee ballot requests..." This is just more Dumbocrackass ballot stuffing....and Nancy..no I mean Gonzo...read number 15....no refute...more Al "FuckFace" Fraken and Barbara "Fuck me in the Nose" Striesand crap!

Thanks Gonzo, I was inspired by a remark Matt Sussman made about a discrepancy in votes around Toledo and expanded on sone of the links you gave me.

Too bad I didn't know about the Princeton video I could've linked it or better yet youtubed it in the article.

Thanks again
Jet

Reasons NOT TO VOTE FOR DEMS

Reason Number 7

Who Is Cheryl Kagan? - Dan Riehl
Cheryl Kagan is the former Maryland Delegate who was anonymously mailed computer disks having to do with the Diebold electronic voting machines. But aside from mentioning previous concerns over electronic voting expressed by Kagan, they fail to mention that she is also an activist and was named in a 2004 lawsuit over ... you guessed it, Diebold voting machines. She was a candidate on the ballot.

You can confirm that in this pdf from the court hearing. (top link) But the kicker is that the disks are believed to have come from studies mandated by Maryland in 2003. So, let's connect a few dots. It might be interesting to look into some of the names in that pdf linked to the earlier study, but I digress.

Maryland Dems insist on a study in 2003. Kagan, part of the Maryland Dem apparatus, is alleged to have lost votes in 2004. Suddenly right before an election, disks from the 2003 study show up anonymously in Kagan's mail. Uh huh.

Are elections secure? Not as long as Dems are allowed to force studies and then conveniently drop a bombshell ten days before an election. Get ready. If the Dems don't prevail in November, it's going to be a long, long time before we know who is sworn into Congress come next term.

A Maryland election official said yesterday that possibly stolen computer disks believed to be electronic voting software were "apparently produced" for use by a testing firm hired by the Maryland legislature in November 2003.

Unlike some [Edited] the above was fully credited to the author...

well Jet, you can be certain this article is gonna be in the most popular section for a while...

since your love slave stalker has decided to whip out his talking points in a feeble attempt at discouragement/misdirection

comment #24 is a perfect argument for birth control

Excelsior?

JustOneDan is talking plagarism, but copies his talking points from Dan Riehl's website. Talk about pot calling the kettle black.

Indeed Gonzo, Indeed...

JOSM now it's not nice to pick on the less fortunate than you.

there's a video of folks at Princeton hacking a Diebold in under a minute ...

So what you're saying is that we're in imminent danger of ivy league leftist nerds stealing the election?

could be why so many states are seeing up to a tenfold increase in absentee ballot requests...

Because election fraud the old-fashioned way is still the most popular.

Dave

Dave asks "So what you're saying is that we're in imminent danger of ivy league leftist nerds stealing the election?"

Nice turnabout, but no soap Dave. We're in imminent danger of someone who wants to change the election results hiring an ivy league leftist nerd to steal the election...

Now, was my documentation in the article too much to argue with? I always write my political pieces with you, Mark, Gonzo and Nancy in mind.

Jet

Recent CNN polls show that as many as seventy-one percent of Americans disapprove of the job the GOP-led Congress is doing. The overall feeling toward Congress appears to be one of frustration with both houses being fixated with passing legislation imposing strict Taliban-style religious morals instead of addressing our country's more pressing problems.

The link you provided with this paragraph doesn't work, but it appears to be a local Georgia website. Does that 71% number represent some sort of regional disapproval rating, because all the latest national polls show Bush in the 57-60% disapproval range. See polling report for details.

States are so frustrated with this congress that they've resorted to raising the minimum wage on their own, because the U.S. Congress can't do it.

This is not true. Almost all of the state minimum wages were established years before the current congress and administration, some of them as long ago as the 1930s. In addition, one state actually has a minimum wage lower than the federal minimum wage, and none of the state minimum wages are higher than the prevailing market wage for starting workers in those states or surrounding states.

The minimum wage, be it federal or local, is meaningless, because the labor market already sets the entry level wage higher than the $7.50 an hour which is the highest state minimum wage.

Our national debt in the year 2000 was $20 Trillion. According to the Government Accountability Office

The national debt is actually still in a fairly normal range as a percentage of GDP, which is a more sensible way to look at it.

Despite whether human tampering happens or not, there's a glaring question mark here. Despite the fact that they have the capability and motherboard port for them, why does the overwhelming evidence seem to be that the voting machines were intentionally purchased without printers?

The explanation for this has been public knowledge for ages. It's a matter of cutting corners on costs on the part of local election officials - who BTW are mostly Democrats.

Diebold voting machines use basically the same motherboards as their ATMs, so it would be a simple matter to attach a printer. Then each voter would be given an anonymous and unique ID number. As each ballot was cast, the printer would add it to a roll, and the voter could then check his number against the printed record on his way out the door. In the case of a recount it'd be right there for all to see.

Sounds like an obvious solution to me. We need a federal Electronic Voting Standards Act to make sure such problems are addressed.

BTW, does anyone have any idea where these Diebold machines are actually in use? We don't have them here in Travis County, and I know they're in Ohio, but how widespread are they?

Just for the sake of argument I'll skip the studies done by such prestigious places as Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, The U.S. Federal Election Assistance Commission, Johns Hopkins University's Prof. Avi Rubin, and UC Berkeley.

And especially the ones from CalTech and MIT which proved mathematically that there was no significant fraud in the 2004 election.

What caused all this suspicion?

Rampant paranoia and an effort to distract from the Democrats long tradition of election fraud?

Dave

Dave says...
The national debt is actually still in a fairly normal range as a percentage of GDP, which is a more sensible way to look at it.

A more realistic way to look at it is that the national debt has more than doubled to $43 trillion since Bush took office. What's the interst payment to China on that?

Dave so far the closest I can come is several articles saying Diebold machines are used in 37 states, but I can't seem to find a list yet.

The point of listing the studies Dave was to show that they all say the machines are vunerable to being tampering with, that they haven't yet, or I should say that tampering hasn't been detected yet, is irrelevant.

Jet, it is time somebody actually talked about your article, which was well written and well documented.

I have an insight into this that I can contribute, having seen three different forms of voting used, two in the United States, and one in Israel. In addition, for a short time I had a job checking on the Diebold voting machines in Bronx County, making sure of something or other that thirty three or four years have managed to erase from my memory.

While living in Minnesota, I tried to design an electronic machine that would quickly tabulate and transfer election data to a central data bank in St. Paul. My idea was ridiculously simple and I did not think of a printer insde the machine recording the data, something that would have been obvious to me had I used ATM's. In Minnesota I never did, so the thought never even occurred to me. Very unlike the folks at Diebold, who manufacture ATM's, as well as voting machines. The issue of hacking and kids hacking into the system kept coming up as objections as I pushed this idea (I wanted to make some money too, as you might imagine) and frankly, a printed log of all transactions occurring within the machine would reveal any hacking attempts, no matter how clever.

The fact that there is no printed log within the machines that Diebold manufactures and sells is very revealing of the intent of the designers, who unlike me, were very aware of what a printed record could mean.

My sons' friends, who do not go to an Ivy League school, but religious high schools in Jerusalem, could likely hack into the system Diebold has designed. If my own mind could grok computer logic, I probably could too.

So relying on a toy like a computer as your voting machine without having at least the backup of a printed record of its transactions is inviting voting fraud.

As G-d told Cain "...Sin rests your door. Its desire is toward you, yet, you can conquer it" (Gen. 4:7, in part)

Diebold, and those who hired the firm and gave it the specifications, have no desire to conquer sin.

What caused the suspicion was not paranoia Dave and it's plainly outlined in the article. Kerry waw supposed to win Ohio, every exit poll predicted it along with nearly every news organization. Then suddenly the election results changed.

Thanks very much Ruvy I'm glad you contributed. I was refering in the article to a big external printer accessible to the voter so that he could verify his vote was tabulated correctly by matching his ballot number to the printed record.

Since the motherboard does have a printer port, the problem isn't the design, it's states not buying the printer REGARDLESS OF POLITICAL AFFILIATION.

Apparently varifiable elections are ohly worth so much before you go over budget.

Thanks again Ruvy!

Aviel Rubin, technical director of the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, led a team of three computer scientists to examine source code for touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold. More than 40,000 Diebold voting machines are in use in 37 states. Most use touch-screen technology, while the rest use optical-scanning equipment, said Mike Jacobsen, a company spokesman.

The code was downloaded earlier this year from a company FTP site. The site isn't public, but it's also not secure. Diebold's field representatives used the site to fix the company's voting machines. Diebold has since pulled the source code off the Internet. The company's employees now carry discs.

Within a half-hour of examining the code, Rubin's team found its first red flag. The password was embedded in the source code. "You learn (not to do) that in security 101," said Tadayoshi Kohno, one of the report's co-authors. "The designers didn't follow standard engineering processes."

Other "stunning flaws" Rubin said the team found in Diebold's source code included voter smart cards that could be manipulated to cast more than one vote, software that could be reconfigured by malicious company workers or election officials to alter voters' ballot choices without their knowledge and machines that could be electronically broken into through remote access.

For the rest of this article click anywhere in the colored section.

Dave said...

Recent CNN polls show that as many as seventy-one percent of Americans disapprove of the job the GOP-led Congress is doing.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave. Had you read the article not skimmed it you'd have noticed even in your copy and paste that that refers to Congress' approval rating, not Bush's.

...Approval of Congress has plunged to its lowest level in more than a decade (32 percent), and Americans, by a margin of 54 percent to 35 percent, say they trust Democrats more than Republicans to deal with the biggest problems the nation is confronting. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said congressional Democrats deserve to be reelected next month, but just 39 percent said Republicans deserve to return to office.

The poll measures broad public attitudes and cannot be translated into individual House districts, but it sketches an environment that is the most difficult the Republicans have faced since taking control of Congress in the 1994 elections. By a margin of 54 percent to 41 percent, registered voters said they plan to vote for the Democrat over the Republican in congressional elections next month...

...In the Post-ABC News poll, 71 percent agreed that Congress did little or nothing this year...


For the rest of this WASHINGTON POST article click anywhere in the colored section.

Aviel Rubin, eh? Information security is one of Israel's bigger products (which is why near any high schooler here can hack into a system with astonishing ease). It would not surprise me at all if Mr. Rubin spoke with a Hebrew accent.

Those darned Jews are everywhere aren't they?

Thank G-d

It's funny to see a post hinting at GOP voter corruption when it's the Democrats who have been fighting voter id laws tootha nd nail. I guess the Dems figure, and rightly so, that they can't win without all those dead people and illegal aliens voting for them two or three times.

Reason Number 8 Not to Vote for Dumbocrats

To quote the typists "Kerry waw supposed to win Ohio.... Then suddenly the election results changed."

LOL.. I was supposed to win the Powerball lottery than suddenly some factory worker in Missouri won! This is the kind of flawed lunacy presented in this "well documented and factual" propaganda!

"The Dems tough on gays, weak on the truth"

I've put my sources out for everyone to see Arch, let's see you prove what your saying with some links to facts and credible sources.

Put up or shut up

FACT Number 1 - California Democratic Secretary of State Kevin Shelley

Besides allegations that he used millions of dollars in federal Help America Vote Act funds to boost his political profile and reward Democratic allies, [Shelley] also faces two state investigations and a federal probe into accusations he accepted campaign contributions from a political ally that had been laundered through a state grant. He's also been accused of accepting political donations in his state office.

Fact Number 2

American Center for Voting Rights 2004 Election found...


[A] careful review of the facts shows that in 2004, paid Democrat operatives were far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression efforts than their Republican counterparts. Examples include:
* Paid Democrat operatives charged with slashing tires of 25 Republican get-out-the-vote vans in Milwaukee on the morning of Election Day.

* Misleading telephone calls made by Democrat operatives targeting Republican voters in Ohio with the wrong date for the election and faulty polling place information.

* Intimidating and deceiving mailings and telephone calls paid for by the DNC threatening Republican volunteers in Florida with legal action.

* Union-coordinated intimidation and violence campaign targeting Republican campaign offices and volunteers resulting in a broken arm for a GOP volunteer in Florida.

Vote fraud and voter registration fraud were significant problems in at least a dozen states around the county. Vote fraud is a reality in America that occurred not only in large battleground states like Wisconsin but in places like Alabama and Kentucky. The record indicates that in 2004, voter registration fraud was mainly the work of so-called "nonpartisan" groups such as Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and NAACP National Voter Fund. Examples include:

* Joint task force in Wisconsin found "clear evidence of fraud in the Nov. 2 election in Milwaukee," including more than 200 felon voters, more than 100 double voters and thousands more ballots cast than voters recorded as having voted in the city.

* NAACP National Voter Fund worker in Ohio paid crack cocaine in exchange for a large number of fraudulent voter registration cards in names of Dick Tracy, Mary Poppins and other fictional characters.

* Former ACORN worker said there was "a lot of fraud committed" by group in Florida, as ACORN workers submitted thousands of fraudulent registrations in a dozen states across the country, resulting in a statewide investigation of the group in Florida and multiple indictments and convictions of ACORN/Project Vote workers for voter registration fraud in several states.

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My, my Jet, You did say that you were an artist...

Not bad...

Thanks Ruby... he probably thinks it's a boat

Can you hear that....the silence of the Dumbs....

So when confronted with facts AS IN THE PAST...hysteria sets in!

Jet, good article, well researched and FACTUAL. Of course the knee-jerk Bush apologists & GOP hard-ons aren't going to acknowledge the truth or facts because it exposes them (or more accurately, their party) for what it currently has become, which is a far cry from what they were when they came in, in '94. Until conservatives can restore their integrity & are willing to clean house in a way that is meaningful and not just window dressing, they have and should have no credibility with voters of any persuasion. I will add that the liberals need to do the same, or they're going to suffer the same fate the GOP is facing now.

Ruvy, did you just dear something, I think someone just farted! Odd I don't see any factoid website URLs? Must be my imagination.

Off to bed, I'be been up all night.

Turns out that "contract with America" was a no-bidder with Haliburton eh Nancy?

it would appear that Americans are inherently dishonest in their politics

fuck 'em all...they deserve the 'leaders' that they have and that they will get

Americans aren't dishonest - that's the leaders & the behind-the-scenes corporate masters who buy the leaders & own them. The problem is that thanks to technology, the plutocracy has discovered the prefect way to produce a nation of uncritical, semi-literate Consumers with limited attention spans who are incapable of independent thinking, partially through from-birth exposure to TV, etc., and partially because critical thinking is no longer taught or encouraged in schools. They have created the perfect masses, responsive to 10-second sound-bites and incessant 'ads' & political marketing of short, easy phrases like "mission accomplished", "stay the course", "war on terror", and "cut & run" - even when such phrases are inherently meaningless except as cheerleading mantras or demonization tactics.

Look at the current elections: both sides, but especially the GOP, are blatant & open about money being able to BUY the vote: he with the largest war chest will win. Bush is quite open about it. Using taxpayer funds to travel (which is a violation of US law, but nobody's called him on it, for some reason) he's been fundraising for the GOP since he was re-elected, without cessation, to the point where he doesn't even do the work he was elected and paid to do, because he's busy fundraising. Katrina was a prime example of this dereliction of duty in favor of his activities panhandling for money.

In the end, he may be right. I wish he weren't, but the American electorate is fundamentally gullible, easily conned and marketed to by whoever has the most money to buy ads. They'll essentially vote, most of 'em, for whoever's name was last flashed in front of their eyes.

So the problem isn't dishonest American voters, it's abysmally stupid & gullible voters who are easily conned by dishonest, venal politicians & the corporate & special interests behind them.

it's ordinary Joes doing the hands on cheating..the so called powerful are just an excuse and funding source

No, the ordinary joes are the paid stooges of the powerful &/or radically corrupt such as Karl Rove, who has openly acknowledged his goal to be creating a permanent neocon administration (I won't say GOP, because he isn't Republican except by the most tenuous definition), regardless of whether that means utterly stealing or corrupting an election & stealing votes, or what. He has even admitted that if he could get away with it, he'd resort to Chinese Tienamen Sq. tactics against the people. THIS is what fuels the corruption; not the voters themselves. Most of them would rather have honest elections, even if that meant their side didn't win. It's the integrity of the vote/election that counts with most people, which is why all the public heartburning about the reliability of the Diebolds (concomitant with the conflict of interest of the Diebold CEOs, etc.) & lack of paper trail.

I can tell you all hell is going to break loose - or it should - if the GOP wins the upcoming elections, because the probability of election fraud will just be too great to ignore, since all the machines are under the control of GOP-affiliated persons or companies. Combined with the current anti-incumbent feelings of the general electorate, it will be supremely suspicious if they do win. Even Gov. Erlich, the MD. GOP governor, is suspicious, as Jet notes in this excellent article, above.

For example, I don't mind at all if the GOP wins, as long as it's a genuine and HONEST win. It's when I have good reason to be suspicious that my vote may have been fraudulently pre-empted, other legit voters refused an opportunity to vote, or whatever else funny business may be in hand, that I object, and I have good reason to believe that all but the most biased partisans of left & right feel the same way I do about it. It's those most biased partisans (or those that stand to lose either power or wealth) that have no compunctions about denying a fair election & corrupting the political process. Most Americans, while they may be gullible & dumber than dirt, are fundamentally honest, I think.

So no one cares to discuss voter id legislation or the left's rabid, fanatical opposition to it and the motives for that opposition?

Arch..i'm glad to discuss the Issue of voting in America with anyone..it is NOT a partisan Issue, and ANYONE trying to make it so deserve a good tar and feathering...

this is a crucial issue to our Republic and the very source of our legitimacy as a government and a nation

so , speak your mind..but might i ask you put the bullshit "left" and "right" bits to the side, and talk about the actual Issue

i don't give a fuck who or what when it comes to these piece of shit Diebold machines...what i care about is the Integrity of our process...

which shoudl be the main concern for ALL citizens, shouldn't it?

can we at least agree that the REAL issue here isnon-partisan, but a genuine concern by folks about the objective integrity of the voting system

since Voting isa basis of our system, then one woudl think all should strive towards making said system as accurate and accountable as possible...striving to minimze the possibilities of fraud or error

my Point in ranting against things like the Diebold systems are just that, in this case it appears that an electronic system that defies said guidelines of accountability and reliability has been designed and implemented

when dealing with systemics, it is always the goal to make said system MORE reliable and accountable, nto less

and the evidence shows that these Diebold systems deliberately make the system less, and not more reliable

as for voter ID...

there's many answers to this one...one state is doing ALL of it's ballots by mail trying to be efficient, and adding in the fact that since the ballots go via the US mail, any fraud would be a federal felony (mail fraud)

the only way i can see to help the system when it comes to trying to eliminate fraud by having non-registered people voting, and many of these other Issues would be to have the federal election comission being in charge of federal elections

but since this is handled atthe local level, then the problem you are talking abotu has to be dealt with on the local level... no one size fits all solution is available

can we agree on these basics as well as the Principle that this Issue is a non-partisan one at it's core, but rather a threat to our entire system of government?

cuz this gonzo thinks the Issue IS that important

Excelsior?

Arch, I'm the "Left" and I approve of it wholeheartedly. Just because Kennedy doesn't, doesn't mean he represents ALL us Leftist loonietunes. An awful lot of us think IDs are not only inevitable but a good thing. It ain't the Righties that're alone in approving of it. It's just that Kennedy squeals louder, so he gets more attention.

Besides, you ought to be aware by now that, at least for the Dems, the Party Leaders do NOT represent the vast majority of Dems; they represent THEMSELVES. I would venture to speculate that it's pretty much the same on the Right/GOP side, which is why so many incumbents on BOTH sides of the aisle are (hopefully) about to get a one-way ticket to the unemployment lines.

Troll, I agree with you, we Americans deserve the leaders we have because instead of going out and voting, we stay at home allowing evangelical priests and droves of of their preprogramed followers to pick our leaders.

In a way we deserve it because church bus drivers seem to be the only truly committed voters this country has.

I think we need to go to the Australian system of mandatory voting. Nothing else is going to get some of these idiots off their fat backsides otherwise, than if it costs them.

Nancy, you bring up a good point. Here in Ohio the negative campaign ads on both sides are becoming the republican's downfall.

It's to the point where we're all realizing that any point or action made by one candidate, no matter how insignificant, can be "spun" to means something completely different and negative.

Because of that, we're switching channels when a political ad comes on, making us less uninformed, and more prone to vote on what we don't know...

which is basically that two out of every three people in the country don't like the job Bush is doing and three out of four don't like the Republican't congress so that's how they vote.

hopefully in droves that outnumber the church bus population.

Speaking of busloads of senior citizens, the many I've talked to still remember the debacle at the beginning of the year of them being forced to pick from a confusing array of health plans, that have ended making them pay more for medications because they chose the wrong one.

They're blaming congress for that one, so shipping them off to the voting precincts thinking that older people always vote republican may backfire on them.

Arch, since Voter I.D. isn't part of this article, I will not be side-tracked by your diversionary tactics from the issues at hand here of which there are many. You want to talk about that?

Example...
Host-Good evening folks the topic of tonight't discussion is Social Security reform.

Guest-Yes I'd like to speak out on how I hate that Mcdonald's puts mustard on their hamburgers when you didn't ask for it.

write your own article about I.Ds.

Love, hugs and Kisses
Jet

I've finding it interesting how the right wingnuts are so happy to spew their vomit on other's work, but they[re not proud enough of their own thought (which usually aren't their own thoughts) enough to put them down on for others to read.

Gonzo to Arch-...so , speak your mind..but might i ask you put the bullshit "left" and "right" bits to the side, and talk about the actual Issue

Oh god I needed a good belly laugh about then

Thanks Gonzo

Thanks Gonzo, exactly the point I was trying to make. Diebold is only part of the problem.

It's not that the right or the left is capable or motivated to alter the election results; it's that thanks to Diebold and others it's possible through security glitches to do it at all!

A democracy that can't rely on the integrety and reliability of the people to voice their opinions and voter decisions, is no longer a democracy.

Right Nancy, If it were up to me our representatives would all wear name tags that said

Bing,

If you have compuslory voting, as you do in Australia, you do not need such bullshit as a voter ID card.

Besides, the issue is not the ID card, but the integrity of the machines themselves which Americans rely on to tabulate their votes.

In Israel, ther are no voting machines, and there is a national ID card (the Teudát Zehút) which is taken away from you when you are voting. You are assigned a voting place by the Miniatry of Interior's polulation control section, and that is where you are allowed to vote. You put the appropriate piece of paper in an envelope, deposit the envelope in the box ans sign that you have voted.

The problems here come with people stealing the voting boxes (I didn't say there was no voter fraud here).

while I object to mandatory anything I could go along if 'none of the above' were always included on the ballot

Thanks Ruvy. One of the reasons that Election day hasn't been declared a national holiday a long time ago is that the Right doesn't want the working class (who are basically union workers etc and left leaning loonies with low paying jobs) to have a day off when they can get away from work and vote.

That and by the time they get off work they'll figure it's too late to make a difference anyway and the lines will be too long and the traffic to dense.

cunning isn't it?

Troll????????? ar you trying to make sense to these people?.......you silly

Two weeks before Election Day, voters are more focused on national issues than in any previous congressional election, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and they express unprecedented pessimism on the war in Iraq and downbeat attitudes about the economy.
Just 19% of those surveyed say the United States is winning in Iraq, an all-time low. And 38% say their own member of Congress doesn't deserve re-election, an all-time high.


For the rest of this USA TODAY article By Susan Page and Jill Lawrence click anywhere in the colored section.

despite public disenchantment the Repubs are out fund raising the Dems by significant margins...historically elections overwhelmingly go to the 'richest' candidate

this will be an interesting one

(actually the above concerning $ raised applies to the House...I haven't looked at the Senate races yet)

To the rich go the spoils Troll?

yawnnnn....another freak show circle jerk...keep watchin the polls as the dem poll numbers start to drop....keep up the good work lefty loonies the voters are seeing what yer party is all about!

Reason Number 8 not to Vote for the Dumbofux

...Nancy Pelosi

There are legitimate reasons to be against much of the voter id legislation. If it entails having a drivers license or picture id it will lop off blocks of the voting public. This is why many dems are against it and some repubs are for it.

Ask yourself what is a greater threat to the integrity of an election. The odd individual who votes illegally or the ability to hack a computerized voting system and alter the results?

Then factor in the age old conventional wisdom that a higher turnout favors dems and you have all you need to know about why the republicans are virtually silent on diebold, and pushing Jim Crowesque legislation to either limits the rolls or paint the dems as in favor of fraud.

Obviously it plays right to the base. See Arch.

I'm all for a user friendly id system. But not at the cost of denying someones right to vote.

Until we make the politicians make the election process job one, we are going to have questions.

The fact that after all the irregularities revolving around these machines, we still don't have a mandatory paper trail for ALL votes is a disgrace and tells you more than you may want to know about those we elect to office and ouselves.

Our apathetic asses get what they deserve.

Arch, since Voter I.D. isn't part of this article, I will not be side-tracked by your diversionary tactics from the issues at hand here of which there are many. You want to talk about that?"

The article is about voter fraud right? Well it's blatantly obvious that the reason the Dems oppose voter id legislation is that it will hinder their attempts at rigging elections. My pointhad everything to do with the topic of the article.

As for Bill B.s moronic statement that voter id laws are "jim croweqsue"..........voter id legislation would apply to all American citizens regardless of race, creed, or color so take your bullshit race baiting argument somewhere else.

I like JOM. Guys like him ensure that the Republicans don't have a prayer. By all means, keep spewing.

Arch,
All you have to do is google it and it just might open your mind. Some id laws have already been overturned by the courts. Oh wait, it's those pesky activist commie judges at it again.

Either way you conveniently dodged my other main point. Where are the lead repubs pushing the mandatory paper trail legislation? Arguably tampering with the programs is a much greater threat to our voting process than ids? Why swat flys when there's a nest worth of wasps feasting on your head?

Or is your support for id's simply lockstep, mindless hogwash?

Just to clarify, the id laws are being challenged as placing an undue burden on the poor, most of whom are white but with the black poor being disproportionately affected. This is where my reference to Jim Crow came from and in my opinion relevant.

If one prefers to discard the racial aspects, feel free to view it as another shining example of compassionate conservatism at work.

Here ya go boys, girls and Jeters....a little dose of reality...gee I feel like the left-wing-looney NostraDUMBASS from the middle east...

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

October 24, 2006 -- The latest polls show something very strange and quite encouraging is happening: The Republican base seems to be coming back home. This trend, only vaguely and dimly emerging from a variety of polls, suggests that a trend may be afoot that would deny the Democrats control of the House and the Senate.

With two weeks to go, anything can happen, but it is beginning to look poss- ible that the Democratic surge in the midterm elections may fall short of control in either House.

Here's the evidence:

* Pollsters Scott Rasmussen and John Zogby both show Republican Bob Corker gaining on Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee, a must-win Senate seat for the Democrats. Zogby has Corker ahead by seven, while Rasmussen still shows a Ford edge of two points.

* Zogby reports a "turnaround" in New Jersey's Senate race with the GOP candidate Tom Kean taking the lead, a conclusion shared by some other public polls.

* Even though Sen. Jim Talent in Missouri is still under the magic 50 percent threshold for an incumbent, Rasmussen has him one point ahead and Zogby puts him three up. But unless he crests 50 percent, he'll probably still lose.

* Even though he is a lost cause, both Rasmussen and Zogby show Montana's Republican Sen. Conrad Burns cutting the gap and moving up.

* In Virginia, Republican embattled incumbent Sen. George Allen has now moved over the 50 percent threshold in his internal polls. (He'd been at 48 percent.)

Nationally, Zogby reports that the generic Democratic edge is down to four points, having been as high as nine two weeks ago.

None of these data indicates that the Republicans are out of trouble yet, but Democrats must win one of these three races: Ford in Tennessee, Menendez in New Jersey or Webb in Virginia. If not, they'll fall at least one seat short of controlling the Senate even if they succeed in knocking off all five vulnerable GOP incumbents in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Missouri.

Why are Republican fortunes brightening?

The GOP base, alienated by the Foley scandal and the generally dismal record of this Congress, may have fast forwarded to the prospect of a Democratic victory and recoiled. They may have pondered the impact of a repeal of the Patriot Act, a ban on NSA wiretapping and a requirement of having an attorney present in terrorist questioning - and decided not to punish the country for the sins of the Republican leaders.

Bush's success in dealing with North Korea and his willingness to reassess tactics in Iraq could also play a part in the slight shift now underway.

Then, too, some in the Democratic Party must be finally realizing what a disastrous decision it was to put Howard Dean in as party chairman. The Democratic National Committee is broke and borrowing, while the GOP can afford to fund fully its key races.

Right now, we would have to say that control of Congress has gone from "lean Democrat" to a "toss-up." And that's progress for the Republicans.

Eileen McGann co-authored this column.

JustOneSmarter..[Edited]..as most Dumbocrats you fail to see that I give credit to my sources [Edited]

EDITOR - THE PC VERSION

unlike those that just retype others work and take credit for it - not that theres anything wrong with that

Bill B... Well put, and I have nothing more to add. Thanks for contributing.

Arch, this article has to do with happens after the voter decides, voter fraud has nothing what so ever to do with this.

af for your mindless, repetitive and automatic critisisms write your own article if you,re so wise and knowledgeable!. Otherwise you're just wasting time here.

Arch, one thing I won't fault you is your intellect. Too bad you use it for evil instead of good.

Can you dish it out but not take it?????

Write your own articles, express your own thoughts, and see what it's like on the other end of the stick...

Hmmmmm I just found an interesting article by Dick Morris and co-authored by Eileen McGann

In part it reads...

...The Gallup poll of Oct. 6-8 shows that, in the wake of the Foley scandal, the number of "white frequent churchgoers" who are planning to vote Republican has dropped from 58 percent to 47 percent since last month. The margin of their support for Republicans over Democrats, 26 percentage points in September, has entirely disappeared and the parties are tied among this core element of the Republican base...

...The Gallup poll also reveals that Democrats now win all eight major issues, including terrorism and morality. Asked which party would do more to enhance "moral standards in the country," Democrats now win 47 to 36! And on terrorism, Democrats now have a 47-to-42-percent advantage....

...According to the latest Fox News poll, 61 percent of voters believe that Hastert knew about the Foley affair early on and did nothing to stop it...

...With this kind of defection, Republican Sens. Mike DeWine (Ohio), Conrad Burns (Mont.), Rick Santorum (Pa.), Jim Talent (Mo.) and Lincoln Chaffee (R.I.) seem likely to be gone. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-Tenn.) seat seems likely to go to Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.). And Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) may also be on his way out. In New Jersey, after trailing Tom Kean Jr. for most of September, Sen. Robert Menendez (D) seems to have moved out to a small lead that will probably grow...

For the rest of this INTERESTING article click anywhere in the colored section.

Thanks Just One Man [Edited] for recomending this writer in your comment 79! You're sweet to bring it to my attention!

I mean if you can't trust and her Eileen McGann and her FamilySecurityMatters.org as an unbiased news source, who can you trust?

- In December 2000, the US total public debt outstanding was $5.66 trillion. In July 2006, the most recent published data, the US total public debt outstanding was $8.44 trillion. Depending on the price deflator you use, about 40% of the increase was inflationary. $8.44 trillion is a lot of money, but it's not $43 trillion.

(I think the numbers that you're using are GAO's estimated fiscal exposures. The most recent numbers show an increase from 2000 to 2005 of $26 trillion. $20.7 trillion of this increase is Medicare. If you want to argue that the Democrats will drastically cut Medicare, feel free. Note that the numbers are estimates of net present value of projected commitments based on current laws.)

- "The manufacturers, instead of admitting there were problems, are blaming human errors such as forgetting to distribute materials necessary to run the machines and insufficient memory cards to count the votes." Considering that Maryland officials did forget to distribute the memory cards, and in some cases failed to even show up, it's hard to see how Diebold is at fault.

- It's a good thing you didn't mention the Princeton University or Carnegie-Mellon University studies, because you don't link to any. The articles that you do link to have quotes from teachers. So those really aren't university studies, are they? Similarly, the US Federal Election Assistance Commission article quotes a few former officials, but cites no specific studies. I didn't bother checking your other links.

- Are this year's Ohio Republican campaigns really focusing on freedom fries and flag burning?

- I'm glad you consider your article to be intelligent, but it's a bit unseemly to mention it so often. Especially since your article revolves around insinuations of a GOP / Diebold conspiracy that you can't support. "Oh, did I mention that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell coincidentally was George Bush's 2004 Presidential campaign co-chairman?" Yes, you just did. Why did you mention it? If you're accusing him of something, do it.

Especially since your article revolves around insinuations of a GOP / Diebold conspiracy that you can't support

Duh

In 2003 the head of Diebold blatantly declared at his Republican $1,000-a-plate fundraiser that it was his intent to ensure President George W. Bush Ohio's electoral votes. CEO Walden O'Dell asked everyone at the dinner he was hosting to raise up to $10,000 each towards Ohio's Republican Party

As for the debt figures...who am I (or you for that matter to arbue with CNN?

from the Situation Room transcripts...

DOBBS: Let's go to some other issues that sometimes I think many don't associate with your office and your role in the federal government. Looking at the federal debt, the national debt, the trade debt. We're talking trillions of dollars, unfunded liabilities, for Social Security, for Medicare, for Medicaid. What in the world does Congress say when you tell them, folks, this is no way to run a government?

WALKER: Well, many people know that we have a serious financial problem. But they don't realize how serious. We have gone from $20 trillion in total liabilities and unfunded commitments five years ago $46 trillion.

DOBBS: Can you say that again? WALKER: From 20 trillion to 46 trillion in five years and it is going up every second of every minute of every day because we're still running debts at or near record rates.
Demographics are working against us. Interest costs are compounding against us because we're a debtor, not an investor.

For the rest of this CNN article click anywhere in the colored section

Oh and by the way I did say I was skipping the studies, that you went looking for them isn't my fault, I blatantly said I was skipping over them in the name of fairness.

That's a direct quote from Diebold's CEO, there's no "insinuating" about it.

By the way, Mr. Walker is with the federal government in the quote above.

Well, JOM, I see you posted something intelligent. And Jet, you've made it reasonably clear that Diebold has certain Republicans they want to remain in power.

Now, for the alcohol slap, boys. It doesn't matter which party is in charge of your government. Both parties are infested with representatives of the oil and banking establishment, and those few politicians who make it to major office who aren't part of the oil and banking establishment and who don't tow the line manage not to survive, for one reason or another, or find themselves marginalized to the point of irrelevance.

Put differently, the only choice you get is whether it is an oilman or a banker who's got his hand in the federal and, in most cases, state till.

So much for democracy at any but the very local levels in your country.

I got to participate in a real democracy in Minnesota (precinct caucuses) and saw it spurned by the vast majority of the population - which doesn't give a damn. They couldn't be bothered to get off their lazy asses and go to a Republican or Democratic precinct caucus and try to take control of or even express their views within the party that they thought was relevant to them. You get the government you deserve. An apathetic fool deserves the stick he gets rammed up his ass.

JustOneDanRhiel, you're awfully touchy. I didn't know that your identity was a secret here. That explains why you removed my questions from your blog rather than deny the accusastion. Next time use an alias that doesn't match your email address, genius.

Also, just because I am aware you are a %$&*( doesn't make me a Democrat. I think both parties are screwed up.

jet or dave...could you please better explain this issue to me? From my eyes, If you consider the past two elections...democrats have been begging for electronic voting machines for accuracy purposes. Next, I see RFK Jr. on Fox News saying that the GOP will use electronic voting machines against them. Liberals now question the use of such machines. when will they make up their mind?

Ruvy if you're talking about #79, I found an article by the exact same authors that completely contradicts it on #84.

JOSM, while I agree completely, no one can remove anything from these articles except the Comments editor Chris Rose0... not even me the author.

That would explain him quoting himself all the time though.

Steve one of the most outspoken critics of electronic voting machines is Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich of Maryland... did you read the article?

The problem isn't the machines, it's the ease in which they can be manipulated, and the fact that one of the major manufacturers pledged Ohio's electoral votes to Bush, hardly a fairminded pledge from the manufacturer of the very machines we vote on, unless you're a republican... in which case it'd make perfect sense.

Next?

Jet, regarding my comment #89, my point was not to highlight JOM's submitted article or yours, or to argue between the two. The point of the comment was that alcohol slap that starts in the second paragraph...

Unfortunately, your democracy has been slowly killed by a combination of authoritarian work practices (there can be only one boss and if he says the sky is green, the sky is green, etc.)and a dumbing down of both education and standards of writing, reading and mathematics. From those simple realities flow a whole host of consequences, starting with a very simple one; school is boring for most kids.

Heh. I probably should write my own article on the subject, but the source work I'd need, the writings of Carol Quigley, are really hard to get.

No Problem Ruvy, I just thought I was misunderstood. I'd googled his article and couldn't find it, only to find one by the same authors that said the exact opposite of what h'ed posted.

No worries my friend
Jet

...Potential problems in Ohio include voting machine difficulties like those Cuyahoga County experienced during May's primary, a law that requires voters to present identification at the polls and regulations that affect processing of voter registrations collected by outside groups. Electionline.org also said Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's dual role as GOP gubernatorial candidate and Ohio's top elections official could lead to objectivity questions.


For the rest of this CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER article click anywhere in the colored section

and once again...#99 shows how some will lie and frame in order to denigrate rather than engage indiscourse

i refer to the first sentence of comment #17

the Persecution rests

Excelsior?

The Iraq war has now lasted longer than World War II. That means it's taken Bush longer that it took the U.S. to defeat both the Nazis and Japan combined and they didn't have the technology we have today.

What does that tell you?

Ohio: The Democratic nominee, Rep. Ted Strickland, has a wide margin over the Republican nominee, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Ohio, which currently has a Republican governor who is not running for re-election, was the key battleground in the 2004 presidential election, tipping the election to Bush. Democrats have carried Ohio in some successful presidential elections in the past.

...Additionally, there are other states where Democrats have a strong chance of winning the governorship that could play a significant role in 2008 presidential politics. These include the following:

Maryland: This is a state that normally goes Democratic in presidential years but currently has a Republican governor, Bob Ehrlich, who is running for re-election. Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, the Democratic nominee, is ahead in the polls. A Democratic win would solidify Maryland for the 2008 Democratic nominee.

For the rest of this FOX NEWS article click anywhere in the colored section

oh well I guess Ill drink the kool aid...

WOW...Jet what a great article you showed those Republicans...pure genius!

Most poll are now showing Ohio Secretary of State-and in charge of the elections Kenneth Blackwell tailing by 8-12 points. The perfect test to see if tampering will be done if ever I saw one.

Yeaaaa...Blackwells gonna go down! Alright! the last thing we loyal Democrats need is one of "his kind" in office....Yea Ill bet that Rove already has the Skin Heads and Princeton Programmers ready to throw the race!!

JOM: you're developing quite a good sense of humour - a welcome change of tack. Keep it up...

Thank you Chris...but you are mistaken...I have seen the light...I am now a believer...the left is where I belong...the left is where I belong...the left is where I belong...the left is where I belong...

Other than that you enjoyed the article Chris?

The prospect of electronic glitches and attacks has led Minnesota and New Mexico to ban computerized voting machines and to lawsuits to block their use in Colorado and at least eight other states.

In the past four weeks, county clerks have been hustling to implement court-ordered security improvements in response to the Colorado suit.

The Denver Election Commission bought new video monitoring equipment and made other changes estimated to cost $115,000.

Jefferson County expects to spend $60,000 more than planned for cameras and rental trucks to move equipment, said election director Susan Miller.

Larimer County had to purchase extra security seals for computers, new video cameras to train on election equipment and $20,000 worth of extra computer storage space for video.

"This could be a $300,000, a $400,000 hit by the time we're done," said Scott Doyle, Larimer County clerk and recorder.

And there are other impacts.

Staff lost to complexity

Boulder County officials said they've lost election volunteers who are intimidated by the new voting computers.

"The biggest issue we've encountered is a turnover in our poll workers," said Josh Liss, elections coordinator.

"Most of our judges are elderly or senior citizens, and some decided they did not want to be a judge anymore because of added complexity," Liss said.

In Colorado, there will be at least one computerized voting machine in every voting place Nov. 7, about 8,000 in the state. Paper ballots also will be available in 47 counties.

Voters will vote on one of four brands of voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems Inc., Hart InterCivic Inc., Election Systems & Software Inc. and Sequoia Voting Systems.


For the rest of this DENVER POST article click anywhere in the colored section.

This is the fucking 21st century, folks. Doesn't it seem reasonable to expect to be able to vote on a computer? We do everything else by computer, after all.

Don't let the luddites win!

Dave

Dave you are so wrong...Bush and Rove can easily manipulate these computers just like they control the price of gas...whats wrong with you is so clear to all of us on the left...


From the left...JustOneMan

Yeah, JoM has sex with his computer. If he can trust it for that, why can't he trust it for voting?

Dave

I don't think anybody objects to computer voting; what they object to is there's no way to create a paper trial ... or rather, that there IS a way, but the states which have bought Diebolds deliberately didn't buy the attachments that would enable paper audit trails to be created. It says quite a bit that voters of BOTH parties in all the states don't trust those in charge of the elections without such paper audit trails, doesn't it? In Maryland, Republican Gov. Erlich is even calling for voters to use provisionals (paper) & boycott the Diebolds, which is an entirely reasonable position in view of the Diebold-created fiascos in various MD voting districts during the primaries. But it is like using a personal computer: while you do a lot of stuff on it, you also back it up frequently, and really important stuff gets copied onto a flash drive. NOBODY with any sense trusts the computer enough to not set up some kind of failsafe system ... except apparently the various elections boards of the various states.

Talk about timely, just now my computer added a comment of mine TWICE onto another thread on this site. If errors like this can occur commonly, then I think those who object to computer voting without some kind of paper trail audit system are entirely correct & prudent. That the state elections boards would not bother to buy the attachments tells me either they're stupid beyond words, or they're involved in trying possibly to perpetrate some kind of elections fraud.

Thanks Nancy, I't like I said, would you do business with a bank who's ATMs didn't give paper receipts?

Dave?????

Oh Jet you are so "right-on" how propsterous! Dave would have us beleive that we can even buy books or clothing, make bank transfers, even buy a car on some looney auction website without a paper reciept!

The right is really sinking to an all time low in their attempt to fix this election!

From the Left...JustOneMan

You know, Jet, I'm always surprised that some parties don't get tired of talking/blogging into a vacuum. Kind of like dead air talking to itself, all sound & fury & signifying nothing. Kind of like Bush....

Oh Nancy my dear how right, er I mean left you are! Well here is some more great technology related election news...straight [Edited] from the NYT... Yes we on the left are harnessing the power of the internet to subvert Bush and his band of thugs!

New York Times
October 26, 2006
A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
If things go as planned for liberal bloggers in the next few weeks, searching Google for "Jon Kyl," the Republican senator from Arizona now running for re-election, will produce high among the returns a link to an April 13 article from The Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly.

Mr. Kyl "has spent his time in Washington kowtowing to the Bush administration and the radical right," the article suggests, "very often to the detriment of Arizonans."

Searching Google for "Peter King," the Republican congressman from Long Island, would bring up a link to a Newsday article headlined "King Endorses Ethnic Profiling."

Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated "Google bombing" campaign intended to game the search engine's ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google's formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results.

The project was originally aimed at 70 Republican candidates but was scaled back to roughly 50 because Chris Bowers, who conceived it, thought some of the negative articles too partisan.

The articles to be used "had to come from news sources that would be widely trusted in the given district," said Mr. Bowers, a contributor at MyDD.com (Direct Democracy), a liberal group blog. "We wanted actual news reports so it would be clear that we weren't making anything up."

Each name is associated with one article. Those articles are embedded in hyperlinks that are now being distributed widely among the left-leaning blogosphere. In an entry at MyDD.com this week, Mr. Bowers said: "When you discuss any of these races in the future, please, use the same embedded hyperlink when reprinting the Republican's name. Then, I suppose, we will see what happens."

An accompanying part of the project is intended to buy up Google Adwords, so that searches for the candidates' names will bring up advertisements that point to the articles as well. But Mr. Bowers said his hopes for this were fading, because he was very busy.

The ability to manipulate the search engine's results has been demonstrated in the past. Searching for "miserable failure," for example, produces the official Web site of President Bush.

But it is far from clear whether this particular campaign will be successful. Much depends on the extent of political discussion already tied to a particular candidate's name.

It will be harder to manipulate results for searches of the name of a candidate who has already been widely covered in the news and widely discussed in the blogosphere, because so many links and so many pages already refer to that particular name. Search results on lesser-known candidates, with a smaller body of references and links, may be easier to change.

"We don't condone the practice of Google bombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results," said Ricardo Reyes, a Google spokesman. "A site's ranking in Google's search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query."

The company's faith in its system has produced a hands-off policy when it comes to correcting for the effects of Google bombs in the past. Over all, Google says, the integrity of the search product remains intact.

Writing in the company's blog last year, Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products, suggested that pranks might be "distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission."

Still, some conservative blogs have condemned Mr. Bowers's tactic. These include Outside the Beltway, which has called him "unscrupulous," and Hot Air, which declared the effort "fascinatingly evil."

But Mr. Bowers suggested that he was acting with complete transparency and said he hoped political campaigns would take up the tactic, which he called "search engine optimization," as a standard part of their arsenal.

"I did this out in the open using my real name, using my own Web site," he said. "There's no hidden agenda. One of the reasons for this is to show that campaigns should be doing this on their own."

Indeed, if all campaigns were doing it, the playing field might well be leveled.

Mr. Bowers said he did not believe the practice would actually deceive most Internet users.

"I think Internet users are very smart and most are aware of what a Google bomb is," he said, "and they will be aware that results can be massaged a bit."

Go Team Go!

From The Left...JustOneMan

on the actual Subject of this Thread...

arstechnica has another Article up, showing how one person can fuck up an entire state's election results

pretty scary stuff, but just what has been shown and linked over and over

the basic article lays out the premise, then there's a pdf file with all of the info

this is the fucking scariest "story" out there this Halloween season...

woe is U.S.

Excelsior?

Kinda makes you wonder doesn't it Nancy?

Gonzo..yes your are corrent I remember some years ago "one person" did not only fuck up an entire state's election results he actually tried to circumvent the results of a National Election...the nerve of the Republicans and their ilk!!!...oh.....wait...a minute....well eventhough Al Gore is one of us it proves "one person can fuck up an entire state's election results"

From the Left....JustOneMan

Gonzo, I highly recommend an HBO special that'll be aired Nov 2 called "Hacking Democracy". I'm trying to get an advanced copy through EO so I can review it.

Jet

Yes that was me, Jet. And JoM got my point exactly in #116.

If we can do all the things he mentioned by computer and through the internet, many of which impact us as much or more than voting, then why the hell can't we have a system for voting in person or online which uses a computer and does it securely?

Here's the reason - the vulnerability of the system is and remains the human factor, not the computers. The same people who used to lose ballot boxes or stuff them are the ones who will lose computer data or replace or add to it. The computer is just an electronic ballot box.

When you stuffed your paper ballot into a box which was then counted by humans who could be corrupted did you ask for a receipt?

I agree that flawed machines which can be easily hacked should be fixed and Diebold or other providers should foot the bill. But blaming the voting machines is like blaming the ATM when your bank gets robbed. It just doesn't make any sense.

Dave

It does if you try to deposit money in your account through the ATM and it goes into George Bush's account.....

for Dave in #123...

it DOES matter if, as it appears in the case of Diebold, that such means to hack the system were built into the system deliberately in the first place

which any and every independant technical source has come up with so far, no exceptions...

i can easily Agree that the human factor is penultimate, but the deliberate fucking up of a system to make it LESS reliable and more EASILY manipulated, needs to be addressed

Excelsior?

Gonzo, this is an old story. Diebold built the vulnerabilities into the system so that they'd be easy to program and they were lazy and thoughtless about the security implications. Your technical sources all agree they were built in - even Diebold has acknowledged THAT - but there are perfectly believeable (if stupid) reasons for it that aren't part of some nefarious conspiracy silliness.

Dave

Diebold also has a reasonable argument when they claim that the machines suck because they were built to specifications given to them by their customers which limited what they could do and the price they could do it at.

What's another definition of a camel? A horse built to government specifications.

Dave

Okay Dave 123 I just don't seem to recall you expressing yourself like that before.

jet

Martin 124... You mean it doesn't already?

not buying the "plausible deniability" bit when it comes to electronics

either a conscious decision is made in engineering, or it isn't..electronics really ARE that binary, especialy in the design phase

case in point, the whole "we can't hook a printer" bit..when it has been clearly proven objectively that each and every one of the machines has the ability designed in

next woudl be the source code... the version shipped for the past primaries has the actual administrator override password written into the source code..in clear violation of software security 101

add to it the sheer proven capability that even now, with the current shipping version, a single individual with a tampered voter card, can infect the entire system and have it tabulate anything desired with no "trail" left afterwards...

so, you get possible gross incompetence, deliberate holes in basic engineering principles and practices (which, strangely are NOT in the ATM's made with the EXACT same motherboard, and baseline software)...

there may be a possible other explanation, but not one i can discern that has any basis in reality, or engineering

Excelsior?

Dave when the exit poll results very from the actual election results, then I worry. There are some very closely watched races here in Ohio that by all accounts should fall to the Democrats.

Blackwell less than two weeks from the elecions is at 39-41 percent, if he wins you bet they'll be yelling conspiracy.

and with damned good reason!

Another one to watch will be the DeWine senate race which is in even more dire straightes.

Gonzo Nov 2nd-"Hacking Democracy" will show it all, I've gotten a print copy of the special and EO's working on getting me a DVD of it to review.

The shit'll hit the fan then because it shows how easily it can be done and also the vulnerablilities that you mention...

Gonzo here's a sample

In the 2000 presidential election, an electronic voting machine recorded minus 16,022 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Fla. While fraud was never proven, the faulty tally alerted computer scientists, politicians and everyday citizens to the very real possibility of computer hacking during elections.

In 2002, Seattle grandmother and writer Bev Harris asked officials in her county why they had acquired electronic touch screen systems for their elections. Unsatisfied with their explanation, she set out to learn about electronic voting machines on her own. In the course of her research, which unearthed hundreds of reported incidents of mishandled voting information, Harris stumbled across an "online library" of the Diebold Corporation - which counted more than 40 percent of the presidential votes nationwide in 2000 - discovering a treasure trove of information about the inner-workings of the company's voting system.

Harris brought this proprietary "secret" information to computer security expert Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, who determined that the software lacked the necessary security features to prevent tampering. Her subsequent investigation took her from the trash cans of Texas to the secretary of state of California and finally to Florida, where a "mini-election" to test the vulnerability of the memory cards used in electronic voting produced alarming results.

As the scope of her mission grew, Harris drew on the expertise of other computer- science experts, politicians and activists, among them: Andy Stephenson, candidate for secretary of state in Washington state; Susan Bernecker, Republican candidate in New Orleans; Kathleen Wynne, an activist from Cleveland; Hugh Thompson, director, Security Innovations, Inc.; Ion Sancho, Florida's supervisor of elections; and Harri Hursti, a computer-security analyst. Academics, public officials and others seen in interview footage include: Deanie Low, supervisor of elections, Volusia County, Fla.; Mark Radke, marketing director of Diebold; David Cobb, presidential candidate, Green Party; Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of Ohio; and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California.

falls under the "too little, too late" category, Jet

if ti had been aired a few months ago, around the time that objective proof of all this had been demonstrated many times (as documented by all the links i've supplied this past year)..then we might have seen a chance to change or fix the problem

i hope i'm wrong and that no irregularities occur this election day

but the possibility of foul play is definately there....and it should bother EVERYBODY that the very integrity of our voting System even has the possibility of being tampered with on a large scale...

Excelsior?

More...
In Florida, Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho presided over a trial "mini-election" to see if the vote could be hacked without being detected. Before votes were actually cast, computer analyst Harri Hursti "stuffed the ballot box" by entering votes on the computer's memory card. Then, after votes were cast, the results displayed when the same memory card was entered in the central tabulating program indicated that fraud was indeed possible. In other words, by accessing a memory card before an election, someone could change the results - a claim Diebold had denied was possible.