I am sure there could be technology more handy and more reliable than paper ballots. I have a proposal myself. There seem to be academic specialists working on the problem, though I did not get the impression that their sway is significant or coherent. From time to time "unbeatable" voting schemes are announced, but is anyone listening if it is not on Foxnews?
The technological discussion is alive (witness this review of recent timely Ny Times article). But political decisions (and discussion) are still tightly controlled - as if in USSR.
The problem in the U.S. is that the 50 states control the voting process. It's not like France,
If we are to stop whining about vote rigging and start doing something about it, we have to encourage major candidates to adopt a platform of electoral reform to be applied consistently across the US - and that can only be done at Federal level - especially if we also want to remove the Diebold monopoly control of parts of the process. notes from no w here
Wikipedia says:
The Constitution gives the power to the state legislatures to decide how electors are chosen, and it is easier and cheaper for a state legislature to simply appoint a slate of electors than to create a legislative framework for holding elections to determine the electors. As noted above, the two situations in which legislative choice has been used since the Civil War have both been because there was not enough time or money to prepare for an election.
I'm not sure about Tower 7, but I don't believe in the whole 9/11 conspiracy. The evidence I've seen points to it being what we saw, -- a terrorist attack -- and the amount of coordinating necessary would be impossible for the feds.
It's a bit like the line that "Mac guy" has in "Live Free or Die Hard" when Bruce Willis's character suggests the government must have ways of dealing with the Firesale attack on the nation's infrastructure: "It took FEMA four days to get water to the Superdome."
So, no, I don't believe it's possible for the feds to have done it. Plus, the "Truthers" are pricks. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
That's what I'm hoping -- that doctoring the actual ballots would simply be too big a job.
You don't doctor the ballots. Unless I'm missing something, you can simply swap whole boxes of them with boxes full of the results you want after the election.
The original machine counted ballot shows the results you want. Then when there's a recount, the paper trail also shows the results you want.
I'm not sure how strong paper ballot security is, but the only way to keep it watertight is to have representatives from both parties and at least one indepedent observer watching the boxes all the way from the initial ballot to final count to storage. Storage has to be sealed, vetted for political independence, and secure.
I think you'll find few, if any, of these measures were in place in NH.
If such a conspiracy could exist it would be almost impossible for it not to leak out. And who would take all that trouble for the Democratic New Hampshire primary? If the Clinton camp did that and word came out she would be finished. For the Republicans, the risk seems hardly worth the reward. Can anyone be so sure be that Clinton is the weakest Democratic candidate?
Last bit, first: Yes, the fundamentals on Clinton's candidacy are extremely weak, while those on Edwards and Obama are unusually strong. Second: Hacking computers doesn't necessitate a massive conspiracy. It is, as I understand it, sickeningly easy for anyone with even basic programming skills.
Taking the trouble makes sense. It was being built as "Clinton finished off in New Hampshire." She'd been humiliated in Iowa, not only getting her rear end kicked by Obama but suffering the indignity of losing to the slack-jawed yokel candidate, Edwards. That matters a great deal to undecideds who are looking at these candidates, particularly since voters seem to like Obama and Edwards more than Clinton, but are pulled to Clinton based upon experience (via Bubba) and their memories of the '90s.
Now, instead of Clinton being finished off, the entire narrative has changed. (My personal theory was that stopping Clinton in Iowa was an absolute necessity, and that stopping her in New Hampshire was probably a necessity.) Now we're back to Hillary As Front-Runner, with Edwards ignored to the point of becoming almost irrelevant and Obama bogged down in this race-baiting garbage. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Second: Hacking computers doesn't necessitate a massive conspiracy. It is, as I understand it, sickeningly easy for anyone with even basic programming skills.
Yeah, but the point you are answering is that taking control of and subverting the paper ballots was what would require the massive, impossible-to-conceal conspiracy.
Computers (these ones at least) are easy. Ballots are hard.
Regards Luke -- #include witty_sig.h
Yeah, there were doubts. And there will be doubts after this is over. But unless the fraud team has REALLY screwed up, there won't be proof.
Well, here's hoping I'm wrong.
Let's do a nonparametric test here. We observe that only two of the ten counties show machine counts favouring Obama. What are the odds of that? This is like tossing a two-headed coin (Clinton on one side, Obama on the other) ten times and getting two or fewer Obamas. The odds of this are 1 + 10 + 10 * 9 /2 divided by 2 to the 10th power, or 56/1024, or 7/128, or about 1/18. This is not quite significant at 95%. Moreover, it would be equally suspicious if machines favoured Clinton in only two counties or less. But for a two-sided alternative the odds of an extreme result are 1/9, so not quite significant even at 90%.
Maybe if the hypothesis is that there was vote reversal in a single county, the odds to calculate is of Obama ahead only in 3. But I don't think such a calculation is realistic by using a binary variable (Obama ahead/Clinton ahead). *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
