Friday, October 24, 2014

When Chicago Votes



  "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes"
J. Stalin , or some other Progressive


FLASHBACK
Matt Groening's The Simpsons has been heeling hard to port lately.  My guess is it's in response to the popularity of South Park, which regularly makes fun of the Simpson characters, and is staunchly to the right, politically.  Nothing subtle about it either. The Simpsons is usually a good deal more nuanced, but over the years it's most delicious political jabs
 have been at the expense of the democrats. However, this clip of Homer trying to vote for Obama, while a Diebold machine keeps switching it to McCain,  appeared on YouTube in early summer.  The quality led me to believe it was produced by the Groeneing studios, and when it appeared during the  Simpsons season opener-prior to the election- that was confirmed.   The Simpsons go to the dark side? 12/08/08


On the face of it, that SIMPSONS' premise, of a Democrat candidate being put at risk by organized Republican voter fraud, was laughably absurd (but culturally effective agitprop).  The only thing newsworthy about this Chicago vote rigging is that it was discovered and REPORTED.



10 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Discovered and reported'. Do you think maybe the press is becoming disillusioned with the Dems?
Tim

Jon said...

The fact that democrats must resort to fraud to win restores my faith in the voters. Didn't think more than 50% were complete effing idiots.

Anonymous said...

"Calibrate" a machine that has only 2 binary values?
High tech!
I always thought "computerized" voting was an invitation to fraud, just like every kid in public schools being issued a taxpayer funded laptop is an invitation to cut and paste enstupidation.
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick

Anonymous said...

This voter fraud happened in Chicago, arguably the most corrupt city in the country. What else do we need to know?

Scottiebill

drew458 said...

Our Diebold electronic voting machines are not open to "calibration error", which is just journalist-speak for what html calls image mapping. Our touch screen machines have clear areas for each image, with considerable null space in between them. Thus, no overlap, no calibration error. And this is fixed. STATIC. From the factory. The only way this could have happened is if someone on the inside of the election workers group hacked the code on purpose.

Sorry to rant, but as a former programmer it galls me to death that such a simple, bulletproof thing as computerized voting is so effed up. Inexcusable. Fraudulent. Illegal. And so easily solvable: access to the voting machines should be under witnessed chain of evidence rules, just like at the cop shops. Same goes for a test plan used each election for each machine. And an affidavit of purity for the voter rolls, purged and updated every month. And MAJOR criminal penalties for screwing up any of these criteria.

If we can not trust the voting system, we can not have even a glimmer of faith in the "elected" government. Yet every election, we jump through the same hoops of flaming bullshit, as if this is a nearly impossible task. It isn't. It's dead friggin simple, all of it, from verified IDs to accurate voter rolls to the moronically simple bits of code needed to make a voting machine. It's all so easy a child could do it. But oh no, here we go again. Always.

Anonymous said...

What do you expect from the most Criminal Administration ever?

Murphy(AZ) said...

You know... this might sound mighty "Third World," but some of these "wanna-be" Democracies might have the right idea: paper ballots marked with an indelible pen, and each voter dips their finger in a pot of bright, indelible ink to signify that they have already voted. Only way to commit voter fraud would be to cut off the offending digit, and I think the bloody stub would be reason enough to question that particular ballot.

No high-tech hanky-panky their way.

Anonymous said...

Drew - along the lines of what you said (I agree 100%), voting machines and ballot boxes need to have the two man nuke rule applied. Nobody, but nobody is ever allowed alone with any of them once they've been tested and affidavit of functional accuracy issued until the vote is counted and certified.
Willful vote fraud should be a capital offense.
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick

pdwalker said...

Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick,

There is absolutely no way those machines can be guaranteed secure if you allow for a secret vote.

It's so easy to add in so many back doors, false code paths, conditional and or time based logic, heck, just about anything you could imagine that it is impossible to detect and find them all, even during testing during voting day.

Of course, this information has already been given to Congress about how the existing machines are already compromised.

Paper ballots are much harder to compromise, and easier to detect. Electronic ballots are trivial and, if done correctly, almost impossible to detect.

Even if I give the source code to the program, ask you to compile and load it yourself, I can still compromise the system.

Read Reflections on Trusting Trust. Keep in mind, this was written in 1984.

tldr; electronic voting can not ever be conducive to free and fair elections.

Mike C said...

Well as the puppy blender has been repeating a lot lately, you have to win beyond the margin of fraud . Sadly, I am afraid we are past all that and the margin of fraud has become an electronic fact. If you don't believe me, take a look my analysis of the last election results in my little corner of the rubber room. My take? This build up saying the dems are about to get their hat handed to them is just more social engineering. When the dems land a surprise win, think of how demoralized we will all feel. Anyone else getting a feeling of deja-vu all over again? Yeah - me too.

One solution: demand a paper ballot. At least that way it makes it harder for the bastards to cheat. Unfortunately, that is (mostly) not an option in Virginia anymore unless you send in an absentee ballot, which is not counted if the total number of absentee ballots fail to exceed the margin of victory. That will not happen if the majority of voters continue to trust the electronic voting system.

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