Unexpected? Really? When the CEO of Diebold was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president"?

or a nonpartisan transparent one that works and is sized in proportion to the population, area governed, world role, and gdp

That's a good one, there. We heard about the massive lines in the largest cities in Ohio, where working people had to stand in line for several hours to vote if they lived in less-than-affluent districts. Many people were unable to take enough time off of work, and simply walked away from the line, not casting a vote at all.

Kerry's biggest problem in 2004 was not the voting machines in Ohio or Pennsylvania, but his inability to coherently and succinctly answer a simple question.

In 2004, a ham sandwich would have out-polled George W, but the Democrats nominated John Friggin Kerry. Vote tampering in Ohio does not excuse the Democrats for losing that election.

They already do. It's called "ACORN." How do you think Obama won in 2008?

That said, didn't a recent commission investigate the Ohio election in 2004 and found something like four instances of fraud, total? I could have sworn that was in the news recently.

Umm... The unemployment numbers have always been garbage. The length of time that unemployment could be collected has been increased, so the numbers went up.

The Republicans would drop it to a month, and the numbers would be down to a couple of percent, and they'd say "Look how we improved things! Low unemployment!" while people are jobless, starving in the streets.

Oh, there is way more to this one than mere liberal whining and "it could have happened, therefore it happened." I fully concede that the whining over the 2000 election was unwarranted (and frankly made the Dem's look like sore losers, which was embarrassing). But in the particular case of Ohio in 2004, there was some REALLY FISHY stuff going on there. The CEO [wikipedia.org] of the company making the e-voting machines was a major Bush fundraiser (which is highly unethical and a serious conflict of interest in and of itself), promising to help deliver Ohio for Bush in fundraising letters. Combine that with the discrepancy between the results and the exit polling, and you have a situation where serious questions have to be raised about the whole situation there. And O'Dell later resigning from Diebold amid charges of insider trading a year later didn't exactly bolster a reputation for honesty on his part. The whole thing cast a real cloud over the legitimacy of the results in Ohio.

Does all that NECESSARILY point to corruption? Of course not. But it sure as hell raises the question of it.

No, but a weak candidate doesn't excuse vote tampering either. No matter which way I vote, I'd like to know that it counted. I'd like to know that it's not being tampered with for profit, malice, or mischief.

Not only that, but the Secretary of State in Ohio - they guy charged with making sure the voting process was fair and uncorruptable, and that all precincts had enough resources - was the leader of the Bush campaign for Ohio. The systems engineer was a Rove operative. Everything's done in secret and no one can audit the system. And when the votes are cast, there's a deviation from the poll results that make statisticians suspicious.

What? The? Fuck? How does that pass ANY sniff test, ever? Especially Blackwell's conflict of interest?

You know, you can have one orange finger and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Two orange fingers, and you'll still get the 'innocent until proven guilty' treatment. But when your whole hand is orange and there's cheese powder on your lips and teeth? Dude, I didn't have to see you do it to know that you stole the fucking cheetos.

"Just remember, this is the United States of America. We write 80 million checks a month. There are millions and millions of Americans that depend on those checks coming on time," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner

Well, THERE's your problem.

And of course, it seems the more he talks, the less people like him. [washingtonpost.com]

It says that they were set up to be a fallback authority with complete control to be able to modify votes in case the primary systems failed. Those who were responsible for overseeing the systems were sent home by agents of Blackwell, and during that time, control was sent to these fallback servers even though there was no evidence there had been any failed systems to spur it.

They could only steal votes if they were granted the failover scenario, and the architecture made it easy to do so should that have happened - so easy in fact that it appears evident that it was designed with this purpose in mind. Then, private contractors take control of things late in the evening of the election, transfer control to the fully-falsifiable system, then transfer control back, all without any evidence that there had been failures to trigger the transfer of control.

They had motive and opportunity, and the design of the system is such that any actual proof against tampering could be falsified without means of detection. You're right, it doesn't say "votes were tampered with," but the only remaining possible evidence would be a confession. The one man who began to disclose more details died in a mysterious plane crash shortly after.

The voting machines are not beyond doubt. Any time they are being used, the losing side can cry foul. Even if they were "secure", which they are not.

The reason is that the majority of affected people cannot verify their honesty. I could audit them. Probably. Provided I'd be allowed to. Can you? Possibly. Can Joe Randomvoter? No. Joe'd have to trust us. But why should he? Why should he trust you or me? We could be part of the big conspiracy. We've been bought by those that want to steal the election. And there is actually no good way to disprove it.

With pen and paper, it's easy. Here, Joe, have all the voting cards, you can read, you can count, go check. It's very easy to debunk conspiracy theories like that with good ol' paper voting. Nearly everyone can recount that.

This is why voting machines are dangerous to democracy and faith in it. Not because they are insecure and can be rigged. The danger is that it is very hard to prove beyond doubt to technical illiterates that their pet candidate didn't lose because of shenanigans.

FIFU

There are no meaningful differences between Republicans and Democrats, unless you count their donors. It is, and has been for some time, a one-party system with the veil of "choice" pulled over the eyes of the voters. Both parties increase the power of the Federal government (against the constitution and the will of the people), and both parties want more of our money.

The only difference (if you can call it that) between the parties (besides the mascot) is their stance on "scary social problems" like gay marriage and abortion. Both of which have nothing to do with governing and the federal government, if it were Constitutionally sound and legal, would not be involved in either item at all. The Constitution makes clear what the federal government can do, yet we keep electing these asspiles who ignore it.

I wish there was enough outrage to give a third party support, but it appears the deck is stacked against any candidate that isn't an elephant or donkey.

And the real bitch? They didn't need to hack shit to rig the election, just run off those they didn't want to vote. Look up videos taken in Ohio of the 04 election and you'll see the poor neighborhoods would get one or two broke ass machines while the rich areas got MUCH more machines than required, those that tried to hand voters a slip that pointed out their right to ask for a provisional ballot, since they were making people wait several hours in line only to tell them "you're in the wrong place" and expect them to go do it all over again were first threatened and then arrested, the whole thing was a scam from the word go.

Of course with BOTH parties now owned legally by the megacorps thanks to Citizens United you might as well not bother, hell the ballots might as well only have two choices "Show your love, vote for supermegacorp!" or "Teach those guys in DC a lesson, vote for supermegacorp!".

No, the elections are run by the state they're in, not "locally". In Ohio, they're run by the Secretary of State, who was Ken Blackwell. That's why Blackwell is the defendant in this court case. Blackwell was also simultaneously the Bush/Cheney 2004 Ohio Campaign Manager, the clearest possible conflict of interest. Evidently that conflict itself is not illegal in Ohio, though it's probably up to the SoS (Blackwell) whether that conflict is prohibited. But in this case the conflict evidently saw the Bush/Cheney campaign manager to change the votes cast to hand Bush/Cheney the state's Electoral Votes. Not to mention how the conflict saw Blackwell short poor/Black (Democratic) neighborhoods of machines in which to cast original votes.

And of course Ken Blackwell executed directly to whatever plans Karl Rove dictated to him. That's what state campaign managers' jobs are. And both of them have lied about it for years now.

The real question is why you are lying about how elections are run. You're a Republican, right? And don't tell me you're a "Libertarian", or an "independent". Did you vote for Bush in 2004? 2000?

Then you have the states.

10 Million people getting unemployment checks.

Fuck. In California they have decided that there are not enough people getting food stamps.
In order to get more they changed the name of the program to "Cal Fresh" and are spending shiloads of tax dollars to advertize
how awesome it is to get government handouts.

Don't get me wrong. I have no love for the Pubs.
I live in California though. Here the Dems have 100% control over the state.
When they tell me they need to spend more of my tax money because not enough people are taking full advantage of my tax money
I get upset. I get upset at the program of course but more than that it pisses me off that you can say that.

Shouldn't that have to be some hushed up back room deal that could never see the light of day to work.
How did we get so all fuck stupid that we can sit there and watch commercials encouraging people to get on "The Welfare"?

Let's not forget how Bush became President in the first place. The Democrats nominated Al Gore in 2000. Everyone remembers how Florida results were within the margin of error for their stupid punch card ballots. But nobody seems to remember that Gore lost his own home state (Tennessee), which in my opinion should result in automatic disqualification. If your own state won't vote for you, go directly to epic fail.

Bush was one of the weakest candidates in modern times. In a way, he was similar to Nixon. Both were weak candidates who enjoyed the benefit of weaker opponents. Nixon defeated Humphrey in 1968 and McGovern in 1972; Bush defeated Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. Obama might fit into the same discussion, having defeated the Republican throwaway ticket of McCain/Palin in 2008. It remains to be seen if the Republicans can nominate a weak enough candidate to give Obama a second term.

What I have seen is the opposite. In many states, ID requirements are weak, and urban districts are notorious for less than robust verification of IDs. Illegal aliens have a number of ways to slip through the cracks and vote. Although the Ohio system may have been designed to facilitate fraud, the low-tech systems of other states were designed to facilitate other types of fraud. There are many ways to rig an election.

The beneficiaries of tax-and-spend policy are those who receive the spending, not those who pay the taxes. Considering how much money gets pumped into welfare and medicaid, I find it hard to believe that poor people are under-represented at the voting booth.