Voting in the USA
What are your thoughts about the below information (see all 20 via link):
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
See All 20...
Ref. https://911archive.org/view.php?sec=other&id=17
Sour grapes!
Did you notice where all the information came from? Almost all of the points came from extreme left-wing organizations and publications. One of them came ONLY from a "livejournal" entry, and a wikipedia entry. Since wikipedia is an open encyclopedia, the same person could have easily posted both sources.
Talk about conspiracy theories! The Ohio vote has been very thoroughly investigated, and while there were irregularities, they were pretty much evenly divided between being good for the Democrats OR the Republicans.
I wonder of these people will go back and look at the 1996 vote in Illinois, for Bill Clinton. There were a few precincts where more people voted than LIVED in the precinct!
International Level: International Guru / Political Participation: 854 85.4%
Sorry to burst your bubble on this one. Just because it comes from a source you don't like doesn't make it false. In fact, this story has been on independent news for a few years now, fully verified because those companies are publicly held. Its not a secret that they are brothers and campaign contributions are public knowledge as well and have been verified. So what is your opinion on this if everything is verified and is even verifiable by you?
In essence, your response to one family with ties to George Bush, are the only ones running the vote tally, and publicly said they were going to help Bush win is sour grapes? How much more suspicious does it have to look to get someone to take a serious look at this? ALL of the information above has been verified and has been taken from public sources so that anyone can verify the information. Its all true whether you believe that something went on or not, it should at least make you think for a second and question what you believe about Bush.
I don't dispute where the voting machines came from. What I dispute is the fact that the Left takes that little fact, then blows it into a full fledged assertion that Bush stole the election, although there is absolutely NO evidence of such, only the conspiracy theories. That is the problem. They aren't even theories, but rather hypotheses, based upon the perceived evil of GWB.
A much stronger case can be made that the Democrats attempted to steal the election in 2000, by the fact that in some precincts in Illinois, more people voted than there were adults in the precincts! Or, the fact that the Democrats refused to allow thousands of military votes to be counted in Florida (happened again in 2004).
Just because someone on the Left asserts that something happened, does not mean that it did. Correlation between two facts - that Bush supporters built the voting machines, and that Bush won - does not count as credible evidence.
Besides, why would this phenomenon ONLY appear in a couple of counties in Ohio, and nowhere else?
International Level: International Guru / Political Participation: 854 85.4%
The problem is that the opening statement was not about whether Bush cheated, but what you thought of it. Like I said, it looks suspicious and you can't deny that. This is not about whether you think he stole the election or not, its what you think about the facts as presented with no opinion. When you first response to simply listed and stated fact was that its sour grapes he didn't steal the election, what does that show about republicans today? Why so jumpy?
But as for evidence. The evidence that the mainstream media has kept out of view is staggering. When one of the judges of the supreme court (Sandra Day O'Conner) is publicly quoted by four papers as saying it was aweful when its looked like Gore won, then after they stop the recount children and relatives of all five that voted to stop the recount get jobs in the Bush administration, what does it look like? When the secretary of state was Bushes campaign manager and his brother was governor, what does it look like? When electronic balloting machines are on record that in most counties they are set to reject cards with error (that is they spit it out and you have to correct the error) and in the disputed countys it was set to accept anything and then those errored cards get discarded, what does it look like? The biggest coincidence every? My goodness, you can lay out a full house and people look at it like its a house of cards. And yes, its evidence being ignored or someone would have demanded an investigation of his actions and his families actions in that election.
The fact is that I voted for Bush both times! I am not some Bush bashing Goreite who has sour grapes that my guy lost, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. But evidence out weighs fancy every time in my book. And that kind of evidence just doesn't exist for Gore, and I didn't even like him! But evidence that has been presented is not something that is a lie, it can be easily verified by independent sources and checked yourself, it cannot be passed off as democrat propaganda.
Hacking Democracy: New Documentary Exposes Vulnerability of Electronic Voting Machines
The mid-term elections are one week away - will your vote be counted? A new HBO documentary exposes the vulnerability of electronic voting machines. The film follows investigative journalist Bev Harris as she investigates the security and accuracy of electronic voting systems. Harris joins in our firehouse studio.
Ref. https://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/31/150212
Newest discussion on Slashdot (news for geeks) is the hack rate of the diebold machines and other like it. They had 100 people vote between two made up candidates, all voting for the same person. When the votes where tallied, it was a dead tie. None of them were aware who the other was assigned to vote for. When their security team checked, they verified that nothing had been tampered with. The third party hack team then announced they had sucessfully hacked the machines leaving no trace. All people then verbally announced their vote, only to be horrified that at least fifty of their votes had been changed with no trackable hack present. Fact is, electronic machines are not secure enough for todays elections. They leave no paper trail and can be hacked easily leaving no trace. Thats enough for me to be against using them. Its not a democrat or republican thing, its a common sense thing. If it can't be secured, don't use it. Besides, after changing them in Florida, they don't think they are easier and want to go back. But then, Florida is our "special" state .......
I believe there is nothing wrong with electronic voting machines outright. I do believe there is a problem with the government having no overview of the companies that deliver these machines. No company should be making money on the voting process, in my opinion, anyways.