We're talking Obama and his suppression of the message about his acorn ties.
Now you're just dodging questions.
I win, but we all lose in the end.
Yeah, This is a horrible move by Obama because well, its not like the Republicans have any history of ing with the Justice Dept and trying to force voter fraud investigations that weren't merited so I'm sure they'd never try that again.
How is Alberto Gonzales doing these days?
I wasn't dodging-- I thought you were saying I was trying to suppress AHF.
But you've changed the debate. My original post said that this story does not equate to "gestapo" or "hitler" comparisons. Do you agree with that opinion?
Okay I can't help it. Words have meaning. There is no suppression going on here. Having lawyers pe ion according to the rule of law and writing a letter requesting an investigation are not what Hitler would have done and they are certainly not the acts of an oppressive regime.
When someone does something you don't like, you follow the rules you have and you avail yourself of the means you have to seek redress. This is called civilized society. I have it on the authority of many School House Rock interludes that society (especially that of an American nature) is a good thing.
Now, if Obama starts suspending the Cons ution and outsourcing torture, I'm with you. Until then you're upset because a presidential candidate is seeking legal recourse against suspect and possibly illegal behavior.
And while two wrongs will never make a right - it should be noted that the concerns generated by su ious voter registrations (again, not confirmed votes - just registrations) pale in potential to:
A) The fact that most of the people who create the hardware and software for voting machines are Republican in their general make-up and have gotten exclusive contracts from this administration even though they have ignored evidence proving their security is lax;
B) The fact that many states have purged possibly thousands of legitimate voters from their lists (this is an overwhelmingly Republican tactic ever since Kathrine Harris and Jeb Bush proved its worth back in 1999/2000).
So, one one side you have fake registrations that we have no likely reason to believe will translate into false votes. On the other side, you have the possibility of hijacking voting machines and denying thousands of legitimate voters the right to cast their ballots.
I agree all voter fraud is unacceptable and must be investigated and dealt with (something I've been waiting to happen since 2000). But to suggest that ACORN is the worst problem we have in this regard is simply to be uninformed.
What ACORN ties?
What suppression of his ties to Acorn? Did you read the article?
If the federal administration is giving out exclusive contracts for voter machines, there's a bigger problem than that they were created by Republicans and have security issues.
There's not such thing as federal voting. Everything is on the state level and the voting method is almost universally determined by county.
While Bush has certainly pushed towards getting electronic voting machines implemented over paper ballots (he's a technophile and would do that even if the manufacturers weren't regular republican contributors), he has not handed out any contracts for them.
The US Election Assistance Commission has assumed federal responsibility for accrediting voting system test laboratories and certifying voting equipment through the Voting System Certification & Laboratory Accreditation Program.[1] The purpose of the program is to independently verify that voting systems comply with the functional capabilities, accessibility, and security requirements necessary to ensure the integrity and reliability of voting system operation, as established in the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). With this program the National Ins ute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will recommend labs for accreditation through its National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP).
That's an acceditation program. It's meant to simplify things by guaranteeing they are accurate to the states (obviously there's issues with that, however). It has nothing to do with the manufacturing or programming of said machines other than intending to verify their usability and reliability.
The claim was that voting machine manufacturers had gotten exclusive contracts from the federal goverment.
You're right, of course. I totally skipped a step. I should have said state officials with close ties to the current administration. There's no proof Bush/Rove directly interfered in such.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...y-connect.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0406-27.htm
That makes sense then.
I still can't say there's anything wrong, other than the above mentioned accreditation system needs to be stricter (and require human readable paper receipt that can be voter verified and used for hand recounts), with it, IMO. There's pretty much no voting machine on the market not made by Republicans, and after the "hanging chad" fiasco, the country was certainly going to be moving towards electronic voting machines.
Making sure that program works properly goes a long ways toward dispelling the notion of voting machine hacking.
I'm going to tell you I don't know much about the program, but I'm also going to tell you that voting system companies fight tooth and nail to prevent independent reviews of their systems, and when they did happen, by court order, the findings have been suppressed from being published.
That some of these companies believe that their claims of 'trade secrets' are more important than ensuring the transparency of an election is nothing but mind-boggling. Not only that, but what kind of 'trade secrets' you could possibly have on a system running Linux with a GUI app to pick your votes? Also, if you truly innovated, you probably filed for a patent, which automatically discloses your invention anyways.
When these companies stop the bickering and the suing to hide information is when we're going to start trusting these devices.
(And FWIW, I'm not making this a partisan dispute. This needs to be addressed regardless of what party you support)
Aye, but I wasn't intending to provide proof of wrong-doing; I was merely explaining that the potential of voter fraud, given the examples, was clearly worse for one side than the other.
Point-of-polling voter fraud is a much harder feat than hacking or purging voter rolls.
The first part is true, but the second is not. There have been several high-profile do entaries about the findings and they were reported nationally. The sad truth is that this just doesn't seem to be a big issue for the general public.
I completely agree, and I don't really understand why it hasn't been a bigger part of the debate in previous years. obviously with the war and economy I understand why it's regulated to smear-tactics just now, but that's unfortunate, imho.
Welcome to the Obamagestapo....?
So does the AntiChrist go after the Jews first?
I stand corrected. I actually see that the report in NJ about the Sequoia machines might have been released already (It was originally suppressed). I'm actually gonna go read it now. Thanks!
This didn't work the first 3 times you tried the same bit.
Make up your ing mind. Are liberals fascists or communists?
Pick one and stick to it.
Well, that depends on how strictly people follow the safeguards in place.
The way it seems to go, is Republicans seem to favor things like voter suppression and disappearing votes, while Democrats seem to favor more towards non-existant voters casting votes.
Certainly the unreliability of the voting machines is worse than ACORN innundating the system with misdone and fraudulent voter registration cards, but since many polling places (none of my friends, or I, have ever been to one that checked IDs if you had your reg card) don't follow the rules to guarantee the person voting is the registered voter, a fraudulent voter card can be a big problem.
Given that the Justice Department has been launching seperate investigations into this kind of thing for YEARS, and that those investigations were AT LEAST occasionally politically motivated, the fact that they haven't found any cases of widespread fraud of any sort, even on the local county level (feel free to prove me wrong on this), I would say that the safegaurds seem to be enforced fairly well.
Not really going to argue that. The checks on new registrations have become a lot better done over the last few decades. Just saying the key is getting the registration cards through the checks, since there pretty much aren't any checks to make sure the person matches the card, at least not in practice.
I've always wanted state ID cards (not drivers licenses, just ID cards) free, but required to vote. It concerns me that most of the resistance to such an idea comes from groups that advocate for illegal immigrants and other groups that wouldn't be able to vote anyway.
I haven't heard of any cases of widespread fraud on voting machines either. There have been cases of the machines malfunctioning (which is a HUGE concern and why I advocated human readable paper receipts earlier), but as far as I know, no serious allegations of electronic voting fraud (as in taken seriously in court).
Where in the do you people vote? I live in God's waiting room here in nowhere, Florida and not only do I have to show my voter card and a photo ID, but I have to sign my name on the dotted line of a clipboard that has my name, address, and DL# pre-printed beside where my signature goes.
Of course that was last time. I vote by absentee ballot now. But still I had to verify my name and address so it could be mailed and I have to mail it in with my signature and affirmation under penalty of law.
And seriously, I still don't think there's any comparing potential. One hacker could, in theory, overturn the popular vote of an entire state. The same would take a conspiracy of several hundred, organized and going all day (and willing to get caught and face jail time at every stop - or if anyone leaked) and still they'd face voting lines to slow them down. Polling place fraud just isn't practical. Maybe it once was in the 1960s, but it just isn't now.
In a lot of places, measures to require photo IDs have been defeated. The reason usually given is that photo IDs have a cost, so requiring them could disenfranchise the poor, or because you then have to pay to vote that makes it an illegal poll tax. Personally, I wouldn't require photo IDs unless they were made free because frankly, I agree with the poll tax arguments (and I think IDs should be free anyway).
And yes, we have to sign the form that lists our name, address, etc. You can show your ID card to vote if you forgot your reg card (I've done that before), but I've never really been asked for it if I had my reg card. I have no idea how the law is set up here in Texas, but at least in my neck of the woods, I haven't seen it done in practice.
You have a point about it being easier to organize fraud on the e-voting machines. Easier to do depends on how the machines setup. Logically, they should be set up on wired, closed networks at each polling place and force the black-box to be taken to a central location to upload it's data to the main tabulation system, and I believe that's used in some locations.
Malfunctioning/miscalibrated equipment is a far bigger concern than hacking though, IMO.
Agreed. I used hacking as a throw-away term to cover "messing with machines" or "getting machines wrong" just to illustrate that we're entering a frightening place where a handful of people could really tinker with it all. And while we don't have any proof that it's happened yet - I'm not at all sure we would find proof if it did and that possibility really gnaws at me.
Being worried about polling place fraud seems antiquated to me. But maybe it's that vent shaft on the Death Star that Darth's architects forgot about that blows it all to . I just don't see it.
I've always been against a national ID but the reasons I'd list would make my above use of the word antiquated way too ironic. I'd be okay with state issued ID cards being free and acceptable, though.
Stricter measures definitely need to be in place regarding security and reliability of e-voting machines. We can absolutely agree on that.
At this point in time, polling place fraud attempts would probably focus on local elections, etc. There's no way to make an organized fraud attempt to affect an election of the size of our federal elections.
I actually don't think there's much in the way of any sort of real election fraud going on. At least, not on such a scale that it would be an actual concern. Voter suppression is the most likely form of illegally influencing an election. That's one of the reasons ACORN annoys me. I'm concerned that some people who think they are registered to vote, are in fact not because ACORN didn't fill out the cards correctly or whatnot (not saying intentionally). Besides, when in some areas of the country 80% or so of their submitted cards have turned out invalid for whatever reason, that's a huge waste of resources in the public sector to verify.
I'm a big fan of the 10th amendment and I can't STAND the concept of a national ID. I don't even like the idea of standardized state IDs that is the goal of things like REAL ID. I do firmly believe state IDs should be free, but driver's licenses should be charged for (and count as IDs of course).
Where the did I ever say about exterminating Jews?
This was a reference to Hitler and how when he took control of Germany he used intimidation and the law and concern over allegations to censor anyone opposed to him.
The only ridiculous exaggeration is that you somehow took my original post and came to any sort of conclusion that I was equating Obama's DOJ fest with Hitler's practicing mass murder.
Comical, but typical from you lib s.
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