FAITH-BASED VOTING MACHINES
As voters go to the polls to cut the legs out from beneath the ruling junta, millions of tiny pre-programmed chips will go to work for their master, Diebold Inc. In early voting trials, votes were lost, others not counted, and remarkably, chips were found with votes already inside -- factory installed as it were -- giving new meaning to the phrase, "Intel Inside."
And the vote tabulation "errors" were hardly random. They were caused by so-called "viruses," trojan horses looking for the right race to enter.
If your name was Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc.(active in the re-election effort of President Bush), and you wanted to skew a vote in your favor, you would not skew the overall error rate towards your desired outcome. You would allow your opponents' favorable "errors" to pop up in precincts where they are likely to win by sizeable margins, and program your own favorable mistakes to surface in closely contested regions. This way, the overall error rate appears random, when in fact, electronic gerrymandering has worked its wonders.
Creative re-districting has already heavily favored Republicans in many regions. Because of population demographics in densely populated areas, losing Democratic candidates have often received the majority of votes. Indeed, in some regions, Democrats must receive 5% more of the vote just to tie with their Republican opponents.
Add to this the fact that 2% more people on average vote for the first party listed on the ballot (in most states, either the Republicans, or the incumbent party) then it is easy to see the headwind faced by the Democrats this year.
40 percent of Americans will be voting on electronic voting machines today, and half of those machines leave no paper trail. Voters must take their information on faith because no backup system can recount the votes. I'm sure Diebold's chief, Mr. O'Dell, who promised to deliver Ohio to the president in '04, would never allow his machines to be used to tilt the outcome of elections -- again.
There is a solution. If everyone voting Democratic dyed his or her hair blue and stepped out onto the street at 11:00 am tomorrow (EST), then Google Earth could count all the blue dots by satellite and overlay them on a map of precincts.
It would be most fitting if the antidote to Diebold's "$5,000 Pencils" proved to be Reagan's "Star War" technology.
As voters go to the polls to cut the legs out from beneath the ruling junta, millions of tiny pre-programmed chips will go to work for their master, Diebold Inc. In early voting trials, votes were lost, others not counted, and remarkably, chips were found with votes already inside -- factory installed as it were -- giving new meaning to the phrase, "Intel Inside."
And the vote tabulation "errors" were hardly random. They were caused by so-called "viruses," trojan horses looking for the right race to enter.
If your name was Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc.(active in the re-election effort of President Bush), and you wanted to skew a vote in your favor, you would not skew the overall error rate towards your desired outcome. You would allow your opponents' favorable "errors" to pop up in precincts where they are likely to win by sizeable margins, and program your own favorable mistakes to surface in closely contested regions. This way, the overall error rate appears random, when in fact, electronic gerrymandering has worked its wonders.
Creative re-districting has already heavily favored Republicans in many regions. Because of population demographics in densely populated areas, losing Democratic candidates have often received the majority of votes. Indeed, in some regions, Democrats must receive 5% more of the vote just to tie with their Republican opponents.
Add to this the fact that 2% more people on average vote for the first party listed on the ballot (in most states, either the Republicans, or the incumbent party) then it is easy to see the headwind faced by the Democrats this year.
40 percent of Americans will be voting on electronic voting machines today, and half of those machines leave no paper trail. Voters must take their information on faith because no backup system can recount the votes. I'm sure Diebold's chief, Mr. O'Dell, who promised to deliver Ohio to the president in '04, would never allow his machines to be used to tilt the outcome of elections -- again.
There is a solution. If everyone voting Democratic dyed his or her hair blue and stepped out onto the street at 11:00 am tomorrow (EST), then Google Earth could count all the blue dots by satellite and overlay them on a map of precincts.
It would be most fitting if the antidote to Diebold's "$5,000 Pencils" proved to be Reagan's "Star War" technology.
posted by R. Reynolds at 10:11 AM
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