Can Voting Machines Be Trusted? (CBS)

[JetJaguar]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/11/politics/main583042.shtml


WASHINGTON, Nov. 11, 2003


(CBS) Beth Lester of the CBS News Political Unit reports on new allegations about voting fraud that have been stirring up a storm in cyberspace.
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A new conspiracy theory is taking hold across the Internet. It goes something like this: Computerized voting machines bought from companies owned by major Bush/Cheney supporters are being used to fix elections all over the country in Republicans' favor.

Sites like votewatch.com and truthout.com have been sounding the alarm for months, and the theory got a mainstream boost last week when Howard Dean said President Bush would be raising money from "the guy who makes voting machines, which doesn’t give you much confidence in the electoral process."

Although the content varies somewhat, the conspiracy theory's plot is fairly consistent:


First, there are the three companies that make computer voting machines: Diebold, Sequoia and Election Systems and Software (ES&S), all of which are owned by big GOP contributors. Walden O’Dell, Diebold's CEO, for example, has signed on as a Bush/Cheney Pioneer, promising to raise at least $100,000 for the campaign.


Second are the charges of dirty tricks: Using computer software purchased under proprietary contracts that make it illegal to examine the equipment, votes for Democrats are lost, changed or disqualified.


Third are the paybacks: Republicans get into office, perpetuate the fraud and help advance the causes and stuff the pocketbooks of right-wing Americans.
...

[proud patriot]

1. Great Article

Bring it On that what I say after reading it .
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The last paragraph says "Time will tell if the conspiracy theorists are right or if their criticisms are as easily dismissed as the voting machine companies claim. For now, anger with the Bush administration and its role in perceived voting fraud is increasing.
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Bring it on

[Cush]

2. nice

but they need to put this on the air where more people will see it!

[aeon flux]

3. Sounds like it was written by a Re:puke:

article has nauseating biased tone.

how more patronizing can you get. :puke:

[ibegurpard]

4. Yeah, I was not particularly impressed by the continual references

to THE conspiracy theory. That marginalizes legitimate concerns that have been raised by respected academics and researchers.

[RuB]

5. So its just the ranting of paranoids and anti Bushie conspiracy theorists?

DAMN THOSE DEMOCRATS FOR WANTING FAIR UNCORRUPTED ELECTIONS!!!

""the theory got a mainstream boost last week when Howard Dean said President Bush would be raising money from "the guy who makes voting machines, which doesn’t give you much confidence in the electoral process."

Perhaps it's the reason that Dean's uncompromising anti-Bush stance has been so effective and why Dean felt he could bring this conspiracy into the mainstream."

[Junkdrawer]

13. Yeah - An audit trail for elections - how cuckoo can you get?

What a bunch of nuts.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

6. Notice that one important issue was ignored --

She totally blew off the unbelievable resistance the Bush* Supporters/Voting machine makers have to building into their machines a way to generate a paper trail.

If you want to talk about "conspiracy theorists", how about those guys (and one girl) who kept insisting Saddam Hussein was reponsible for 9-11, despite there being a total absence of evidence. What a bunch of conspiracy nuts!

BTW, did you know that in Australia the code for the voting program is posted on the internet?

[teryang]

7. Lack of integrity in the Constitutional processes

...of elections is a fact not a theory. You either have assurances of integrity should as vote challenge and protest procedures involving verifiable recounts or your don't. We don't. The proponents of computerized voting were aware of this problem before the 2000 election fiasco and the purported remedial measures.

This fundamental problem was never solved before the Congressional legislation and widespread adoption of electronic voting. The additional problems of machine certification and the security of so called "proprietary codes" are just further flaws in a rickety structure about to collapse. The privatization of electoral processes which contravene state statutory procedures and judicial doctrines concerning voting integrity is a major blow to rule of law. It follows of a pattern of abuse of process readily observed in legislative and judicial processes in this nation pursued by corporatist strategists.

[leftchick]

10. very powerful teryang....

and true. you should consider sending this in a letter to CBS.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Well here is what I sent them

So

Not only did you fold on the Reagan movie, (letting the Right win one for censorship), but now you are also callign those with VALID concerns over Diebold, et al CONSPIRACY NUTS? What did the FCC call you down on this, or was this a threat from the Republican Wing?

HAVA has some good things to it, and the solution proposed by many of these so -called conspiracy theorists is simple... PAPER TRAILS

By the way the GEMS database has many holes and back doors and Diebold has also left many a back door opened, as well as Sequoia. But insteand of telling Americans there is a real problenm with these machines... yuo tell us that we should see a Python sketch... after all they are coming to take these people away... right, to the funny farm.

By the way I have seen this movie before, where one party gets way too powerful and grants favors to the insiders, while impoverishing the country... and where elections and how to steal them becomes a fine art... no computer needed by the way...

We know the names of many of these countries... and I must ask is the GOP the new PRI? Are we going down that road? By the way, there was a time when the US Press was still respected around the world for being able to ask the questions that YOU dare not ask any more... what if those conspiracy theorists are unto something?

Of course this is not a question you desire to ask, as if you did you may have to ask, why did you cancel the reagan mini-series and now are running stories calling REAL AMERICANS, not SPRING TIME PATRIOTS, loons.

Sincerely

Nadin Abbott

PS Only time will tell if Diebold et al are not playing games, huh? See we both can play this game.

[Zhade]

9. Does this make Dean the first candidate to mention BBV?

I kept emailing the campaign, telling them to mention it or forget any support.

Interesting development.

EDIT: Oh yeah - thanks, CBS staffers, but fuck you for blowing off the valid concerns and making this sound like a bunch of kooks. You'll be sorry when YOU can't vote, either. You'll be joining the "conspiracy theorists" you so deride then!

[shirlden]

11. Lester is the one wearing the tin hat

We have been particularly careful about not claiming that vote fraud has happened. She is the one who sounds hysterical and needs to do some honest reporting on this. There is certainly enough info on the net to do an honest article. CBS is really becoming a Faux news media. The only difference seems to be that they are making a shallow attempt to cover up their bias, unlike Faux, who just lets it all hang out.

From now on I have CBS on my ignore list.

:argh:

[Junkdrawer]

12. Ah yes, the ol' "Conspiracy Theorist" ad hominem...

We must be getting traction. :evilgrin:

[dusty64]

14. Conspiracy theory, I think NOT!

This seems almost like more of an attempt to marginalize those who see a grave danger to the Country. >>"Time will tell if the conspiracy theorists are right or if their criticisms are as easily dismissed as the voting machine companies claim. For now, anger with the Bush administration and its role in perceived voting fraud is increasing. And the theorists' concerns, verging on paranoia in some cases, seem to indicate a widespread mistrust that will not be assuaged any time soon. Perhaps it's the reason that Dean's uncompromising anti-Bush stance has been so effective and why Dean felt he could bring this conspiracy into the mainstream.">>

Maybe if the media did its fuc$ing job activists on the internet wouldn't have to be doing ALL the work. WTF is wrong with cbs these days? They used to be one of the "good guys" now I'm wondering if I should ever watch the network. We should be happy for ANY publicity of this problem, but this story doesn't make me pleased at all. Seems more like an attempt to paint those of us concerned of the hijacking of our democracy seems like extremist whackjobs.

[DrBB]

15. Do we know what "begging the question" really means?

Because that opening graf is a classic example:

"A new conspiracy theory is taking hold across the Internet. It goes something like this..."

If "conspiracy theory" isn't a question-begging term I don't know what is. Of course question begging--framing the argument so as to assume the answer to the issue in dispute--is right up there with ad hominem as the GOP's favorite form of "argumentation." Has all the advantage of looking fair-minded 'n' stuff. As in this utterly disingenuous "even-handed" final graf:

"Time will tell if the conspiracy theorists are right or if their criticisms are as easily dismissed as the voting machine companies claim."

Yeah, time will tell, but YOUR opinion isn't in any doubt, is it? And then on we go to wind it all up with a nice floral spray of buzzwords plucked directly from the GOP talking points:

For now, anger with the Bush administration and its role in perceived voting fraud is increasing. And the theorists' concerns, verging on paranoia in some cases, seem to indicate a widespread mistrust that will not be assuaged any time soon. Perhaps it's the reason that Dean's uncompromising anti-Bush stance has been so effective and why Dean felt he could bring this conspiracy into the mainstream.

Well, gosh o goshen, what could be more wide-eyed evenhanded than that? Only a paranoid, angry, Bush-hating conspiracy theorist could object to such a reasonable characterization of things.

[Timefortruth]

16. Do you think they could have made it sound any less credible?

Short of calling those concerned delusional?

[dusty64]

17. Everyone ought

to read this disgusting spin.

[Zan_of_Texas]

18. hard to know whether the kid or her editor put the conspiracy crap in

Best I can tell, Beth Lester is very young, possibly a student intern, or just graduated. That is based on a picture of a Beth Lester who has worked at CNN, CBS, and, get this, Senator Barbara Boxer's office.

So, who knows the inside story. Maybe she wrote a decent article, and rather than squelch it completely, her editors framed it that way.

Hard to know without asking.

[uhhuh]

19. My comment to CBS

Re: Ca voting machines be trusted?

I'm so glad that CBS has taken the time to point out this crazy conspiracy theory. It's laughable that people might actually believe that private, proprietary information, loaded into a machine not subject to independent review or analysis, that cannot be verified or recounted in any real sense, could possibly be a point of concern.
I suppose that the next thing these whakos will say is that the good Senator Chuck Hagel, who owned a large part of a voting machine company(whose machines were used in his elections), did not suddenly and overwhelmingly become popular in every demographic group in areas of the state that have NEVER voted heavily Republican ever?
I suppose these nutjobs will probably say that because one little Florida county suddenly gave Al Gore a negative 16,000 votes, that this is some sort of serious problem?
These Bush haters might even bring up the voting machine in California that "called home" the up to the minute results during an election when it wasn't supposed to be connected to anything. I can't believe that anyone would take these people seriously, or that anyone would even listen to them.
Of course, these are all just coincedences. These things are a lot like the UNRELATED coincidences during the 2000 election, where 70,000 voters names were "accidentally" removed from the Florida voter rolls after being "accidentally" identified as felons. That was unfortunate. Even though they were primarily minority voters, who traditionally vote Democratic, I'm sure the President lost as many votes in that "accident" as Al Gore. Even though they haven't had their voting rights restored yet, I'm sure that this is just some kind of mistake that will be rectified soon. I'm sure that it's just a coincidence that overseas military ballots that were not postmarked, or postmarked after election day, were allowed to be counted. After all, mistakes happen, right?
I'm sure that 11% to 17% swings between election eve polling data and actual election returns in 2002 in several races, all in favor of Republicans, are just signs of people waking up to the sound policies of patriotic Americans like Saxby Chambliss and others who bravely opted to defend the homefront, while Treasonous, unpatriotic people like Max Cleland were spilling their commie-red blood in combat in Vietnam.
I don't know why anyone would listen to these people?
At least your reporting on this conspiracy was
truly 'fair and balanced'(TM)

[Don_G]

20. What Happened In Indiana Wasn't Conspiracy

A little over 5200 voters out of 19,000 cast 144,000 votes over a BBV machine. That is not a theory but hard, actual verified results in this past election.

This need to be mentioned too!!!!

[Dr Fate]

21. Good for Mean Dean!!!

Keep on telling the truth buddy!!!