Video: Diebold voting machines’ vulnerability to fraud

BIG YAWN!

There has not been a voting system, paper, electronic, or even using colored stones, created by a human, that cannot be “compromised.”

I grew up in Chicago where they had the old electromechanical voting machines — with the little levers by the candidate’s names, and the big handle that you threw when you were finished voting. And *STILL* the dead voted! (Always Democratic, amazingly enough).

If the intent is to steal an election, a way will be found to do it, regardless of the method of tabulating. This is as old as humanity.

That’s the way things are. Adults — this leaves out the Democrats — will get over it and work on solutions, not throwing tantrums.

The question is not whether or not an election can be stolen. Of course it can be. The question is WAS an election stolen, in particular the Ohio votes in 2004.

And here is where many Democrats have their “Captain Queeg” moment.

In the 1954 movie, The Caine Mutiny, the captain tries to “scientifically” determine who has stolen the frozen strawberries from the officer’s mess. The obsession with the strawberries by Queeg is identical with the obsession that the Democrats have with Ohio in 2004. It is paranoia, plain and simple.

Their thinking: Because the machines COULD be tampered with, they MUST HAVE been tampered with, otherwise they would have shown that Kerry won and not Bush.

Do they have evidence of tampering? No.

Ah, but they offer those early exit polls that showed Kerry winning. And then, like Queeg obsessed with searching for the strawberries, they say that the exit polls have NEVER BEEN WRONG and therefore this is prima fascia proof that the machines were tampered with. And that it was DIEBOLD THEMSELVES that did it. Scientificly proven!

The fact that the people that did the exit polling for the media explained clearly and convincingly why the early returns did not correspond with the actual election results, and that the final vote tallies were within their margin of error, matters not with them. DIEBOLD morphs into that other corporate villain, HALLIBURTON.

It is the strawberries, and ONLY the strawberries that are all important, after all.

The link you provided shows that the new machines, like paper ballots, like the old electromechanical machines, can be “stuffed” or rigged. SO WHAT!

Want to make it more tamper resistant?

1. Hire Symantec to create anti-virus software, if you’re worried about viruses.

2. PHYSICALLY SECURE the memory cards, the machines, and the voter cards until the ballotting begins.

3. Teach the election judges how to spot tampering, and YES, it can be spotted if people use their eyeballs and their brains.

4. Apply common sense security procedures on the extracted memory cards containing the vote totals.

5. Ruthlessly investigate any tampering with the programming, and require independent audits of the software that Diebold provides.

And so on.

Business and banks have been tracking, moving, and applying money (cash or electronic) to accounts for OVER FORTY YEARS without needing to generate a roll of “printed paper” as the luddite Democrats demand — or suffering major fraud without one for that matter. And we’re gonna let the luddite Democrats tell us that there cannot be electronic AUDIT CONTROLS created to prevent or detect vote tampering? That because the CEO of Diebold exercises his right of free speech and endorses Bush, he is automatically assumed to have ordered the election to be stolen for the Republicans?

That’s what this is all about, after all.

The urge to stuff ballots is as old as the urge to pilfer money from the cash register. And there is nothing to STOP the ballot box stuffers from attempting to subvert any paper trails that come out of the machines. Want to STEAL an election? Toss in some prepared bogus “rolls”, discover the “mismatch” between what the machine says and the rolls of paper say, and the “tie” goes to the paper trail, the BOGUS paper trail — and an election is stolen.

The banking industry has an extremely low fraud rate, and Diebold — WHO MAKES AUTOMATIC TELLER MACHINES that dispense cash and are located on every other street corner — is part of this industry.

The solution is NOT “paper trails” as the luddites demand — which themselves are just ANOTHER way to tamper with an election, as I just showed — but understanding the human factor that tampering WILL be attempted and deal with it accordingly.

This is a MANUFACTURED controversy by people (the Democrats) who can’t get over losing *THREE* elections in a row.

georgej on September 14, 2006 at 3:00 PM