2008 US Presidential Election - Page 10

On October 14 2008 15:14 oneofthem wrote:
american libertarians are right libertarians.

On October 15 2008 05:31 Wolverine wrote:


You say you are not a Libertarian. In one of your other posts you say you are an Austrian economist. Which is it? Or are you simply trying to be socially accepted by the Left Wing crowd here? I've read nothing but ass kissing and Leftie pandering from every single one of your posts in these debate threads. Anyway, carry on.

On October 15 2008 06:52 Savio wrote:
I've always considered Libertarianism to be the extreme Right and Communism the extreme Left. I have never met a libertarian who wasn't a "right libertarian".

The word stems from the French word libertaire, and was used in order to evade the French ban on anarchist publications.[13] In the context of the European socialist movement, libertarian has conventionally been used to describe those who opposed state socialism, such as Mikhail Bakunin. In the United States, the movement most commonly called libertarianism follows a capitalist philosophy; the term libertarian socialism therefore strikes many Americans as inconsistent. However, the association of socialism to libertarianism actually predates that of capitalism, and many anti-authoritarians still decry what they see as a mistaken association of capitalism to libertarianism in the United States.

On October 15 2008 06:52 Savio wrote:
I've always considered Libertarianism to be the extreme Right and Communism the extreme Left. I have never met a libertarian who wasn't a "right libertarian".

On October 15 2008 08:24 Jibba wrote:

There's fiscal and social libertarianism. Ron Paul = fiscal, South Park = social.

On October 15 2008 06:18 Mindcrime wrote:


typically, yes, but not invariably

On October 15 2008 08:29 Mindcrime wrote:


Even that is oversimplification.

On October 15 2008 12:52 fusionsdf wrote:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/df8d1f5b7d

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

Vote of No Confidence
In the face of rampant quality lapses, will your ballot count?

It’s one of the tenets of democracy: One person, one vote. But as the presidential election looms, one of the nation’s largest providers of voting equipment has revealed that, in recent years, the phrase hasn’t always rung true.

Premier Elections Solutions, based in Allen, TX, recently admitted that an election-computer glitch could result in servers failing to count vote totals from entire precincts when collecting data from multiple memory cards. The problem has been present in its tabulation software for a decade, leaving open the possibility that some voters’ voices were never heard.1

The company has supplied 1,750 jurisdictions nationwide, all of which were alerted to the problem. They might still be in the dark, however, if not for the diligence of voting officials in Ohio.

As the votes from the state’s March presidential primaries were being tabulated, officials discovered that about 1,000 votes had been dropped briefly as the e-voting machines from Premier—formerly known as Diebold Election Systems—uploaded voting data from memory cards to vote-counting servers.

Premier initially placed blame on a conflict between the machines and McAfee antivirus software, but it later admitted the problem stemmed from a logic error in the source code of Premier’s Global Election Management System (GEMS), which is the software that, according to the company’s website, allows clients to "easily and completely manage every step of the election process."

In a letter to Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Premier President Dave Byrd wrote, "We now have reason to believe that the logic error in the GEMS code can cause this event when no such antivirus program is installed on the server. We are indeed distressed that our previous analysis of this issue was in error."

Prior to that admission, Brunner filed a lawsuit that claimed, among other things, the touch-screen machines made by Diebold and used in Ohio could delay or bring to a screeching halt election proceedings, and that they aren’t adequately protected against hackers or others who would seek to derail the electoral process. All told, $83 million was spent to put Diebold’s touch-screen systems in 44 Ohio counties in 2006.2

As if the possibility of votes vanishing into the ether during the upcoming election isn’t enough to send the country back to the days of scrawling an X next to a candidate’s name, the reality of the situation is that Premier’s problem is merely the latest entry in a laundry list of faults that have sullied the electoral process:

* In November 2007, during local elections in Cuyahoga County, OH, Diebold’s GEMS server crashed twice. When recounts were needed for 10 races, it was discovered the backup printers had jammed, affecting 20% of the machines involved in the races requiring recounts.3
* In a May 2006 primary election, also in Cuyahoga County, Diebold touch-screen systems were used for the first time. A later audit revealed that with 72.5% of the audited machines, the paper system that recorded voters’ choices didn’t match the digital count.4
* In 2006, officials in Sarasota County, FL, discovered that 18,000 voters—13% of the turnout—failed to cast a ballot for either candidate in the race for the 13th Congressional District. The issue was never resolved, and the Republican candidate declared victory by a 369-vote margin. The county used Election Systems & Software’s iVotronic machine.5
* When New Jersey officials double-checked the results of the state’s April presidential primaries, errors were found in 60 machines provided by Sequoia Voting Systems. Company executives claimed the problems "were caused by poll workers inadvertently pressing the wrong buttons on the control panels."6
* Pennsylvania and Colorado have decertified major portions of their electronic voting systems, while Alaska, California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Tennessee and New Mexico have scrapped theirs altogether.

But the biggest failure of all might be with the oversight group that allowed equipment makers to run roughshod over a process that was meant to prevent problems such as Premier’s latest vote-counting snafu.

According to a report from McClatchy’s Washington Bureau, from the mid-1990s to 2005, the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) oversaw a voluntary testing process that tagged the majority of U.S. voting equipment as "qualified."7 In reality, however, NASED had little to do with the testing, instead relying on Independent Testing Laboratories.

Meanwhile, the report continues, "vendors secretly negotiated payments with the labs, helped design the test, got to see the results first and only share their codes driving their software with three NASED technical experts who signed nondisclosure agreements."

With lab endorsements in their pockets, the vendors sold almost $1.5 billion worth of voting equipment, including the touch-screen machines and optical scanners voters will use in November. Subsequent independent testing of that equipment on behalf of California, New York, Ohio, Florida and Connecticut revealed performance defects and security gaps, leading many states to dump their systems entirely.

In 2005, the Election Assistance Commission assumed testing responsibilities.

Since then, not one of the machines deemed "qualified" by NASED has been certified, and the commission’s chairwoman, Rosemary Rodriguez, has said none will be in time to be used in the November election.

References

1. Grant Gross, "E-voting Vendor: Programming Errors Caused Dropped Votes," Network World, www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082208-e-voting-vendor-programming-errors-caused.html.
2. Greg Gordon, "Did Washington Waste Millions on Faulty Voting Machines?" www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/story/48508.html, Aug. 15, 2008.
3. Clive Thompson, "Can You Count on Voting Machines?" The New York Times, Jan. 6, 2008.
4. Ibid.
5. Gross, "E-voting Vendor: Programming Errors Caused Dropped Votes," see reference 1.
6. Diane C. Walsh, "Control of Elections Shifts From the AG to State Department," Newark Star-Ledger, April 1, 2008.
7. Greg Gordon, "Warning on Voting Machines Reveals Oversight Failure," www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/50485.html, Aug. 24, 2008.

—Brett Krzykowski, assistant editor