8 months to the 06 elections. What about the voting machines?

[CTyankee]

Does anybody know what is being done to prevent another 2004? Is the DNC on top of this? In 2004, the Kerry campaign said there would be a lawyer at every polling place. Didn't do diddly. We needed a computer nerd at every polling place! What, please, is going to be done so our votes in November will count!

[Catchawave]

1. 75 million qualified voters didn't vote in '04

The machines are the least of my worries :patriot:

[AlinPA]

3. I appreciate the fact that 75M did not vote; but if they did, we still

have the machines to deal with.

[Catchawave]

7. Hard to "fix" 75 million machine votes ?

We just need to get "fire in the bellies" of those 75m :patriot: <----give them candidates they can vote "for" instead of "against" !

[AlinPA]

14. I can't disagree with "fire in th bellies", etc, but if a machine is fixed

it is fixed. How do you beat that?

[Hippo_Tron]

22. Because members of both parties have to certify the count

And changing one vote per precinct is not noticeable. Changing 1000 votes per precinct is.

[AlinPA]

26. How? There is no way to certify that what went in on the front (by the

voter) comes out the back (results). I'm not talking about a paper record for the voter, rather some sort of record that the numbers of votes cast is the correct number and that the software/firmware actually records the votes as they were cast.

[Sperk]

4. should be the MOST of your worries.....you go to the poll with the

voters you have....not with the voters you wish you had.

[Catchawave]

8. I respectfully disagree....

Virginia had Diebold, and a Dem Gov still won here last Nov :shrug:

[BeFree]

20. Yep

But the machines were being closely examined in that election. Not like Ohio, where something funny was cooked up.

Too, the Dino Gov. elected was probably a favorite of the corporate owners, I don't know, but I did see him on TV one night and he looked and sounded as if he were going backwards, ie, not progressing.

Still, if all you have to go on is one election, it appears you need to surf the DU Election Forum and see us waving a red flag about about election fraud and a progressive reformation of our elections. Catch that wave, eh?

[Hippo_Tron]

23. I don't think that Kaine was favored over Kilgore by corporations

Kaine may be a right leaning dem but Kilgore is literally bought and paid for by corporations.

[yourout]

2. We need more than that....

We need IR transmission detectors, wireless packet sniffers, power line data transmission detectors, cameras recording every square inch, strip searching of all poll workers to verify no one is sneaking in preloaded data cards.

Or


Paper Ballots with hand counting in front of everyone.


In other words were are screwed. Right now there are more ways to screw with the election than there are ways to catch it.

[Catchawave]

9. Whoa! As I just mentioned....

A DEM GOV won the very RED Virginia election last November....why aren't the repugs screaming voter fraud? Let's move on....:hug:

[BeFree]

21. There are repugs screaming...

The few repug true patriots who recognize the fraud are screaming for reform. I guess it takes real patriotism to demand America have real, honest elections?

[Dr Fate]

5. Most Democrats are too frightened to even whisper of election fraud.

At least I have yet to see any DEMs on those TV news shows talking about it.

I think they are frightened that O'Reilly and Wolf Blitzer will accuse them of "watching too much X-Files" or somthing.

Much better to lose more elections than to bluntly confront these liars, I guess.

[Catchawave]

10. The republicans have lost elections since 2004....

...why haven't we heard them whine about election fraud :shrug:

[Dr Fate]

12. Because Democrats are not invloved in election fraud.

If they were, we would have 24/7 coverage about it.

[ktlyon]

6. we can not wait until election day to deal with this

we at DU new the machines probably would not work in 2004
unfortunately it looks like it could happen again

[Catchawave]

11. It didn't happen in VA and NJ last fall?

Dems won, Repubs aren't whining about fraud.

We really do need to move on.....:patriot:

[Dr Fate]

13. Not doing it twice does not mean it was not done other times.

Are you suggesting that since DEMS won in two races that there was no fraud in Ohio or FLA?

If I were stealing elections, I would make sure not to over play my hand.

[Catchawave]

15. Yes, I believe there's no fraud. Period.

Otherwise Al Gore would still be our President !

[Dr Fate]

16. I believe there was fraud in Ohio & FLA and that there will be more.

Races we won in VA and NJ does not prove that fraud never occurred.

[Catchawave]

17. I respect your belief...how can I help you

prove it ? Obviously our Dem leaders don't give a whack ? So the rest of us fall under the :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat:

Gore, then Kerry, promised us a fair election, I guess I'm just tired of being hurt by our leaders. Let's move on :hug:

[BeFree]

19. Here, let me help you

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=203

At that link is the DU Election Reform forum. There, you will get all the advice you ever needed to be able to prove fraud occured vis-a-vis the electronic voting machines.

Once you've read some of the archives in which we DU'ers have established fraud happens, you will be able to wisely converse on the subject.

That's all I can do: You can lead a horse to catch a wave, but you can't MAKE it swim!

[ktlyon]

29. I am suggesting no such thing.

All I'm saying is we should try to get the machines thrown out before the election. I don't think planning on stopping them on the day after the election will be successful. I am positive they stole the election in fact I believe they padded the numbers in other places so George could say he got over 51%, like North and South Carolina and other states they where expected to win.

on edit
sorry I was responding to the wrong post

[ktlyon]

30. I don't really think they thought they would lose Va.

NJ I don't know enough to say anything.

We need to make these voting machines an issue or we will be sitting home complaining AGAIN after the next election.

[Zinfandel]

18. Dem leadership have their fucking heads in the sand, as usual they

are just hoping, and praying, and chanting and shooting crap that maybe they might win a few more seats, because the dastartly republicans have fucked up...but never a thought to the repbublican owned electronic voting machines, that would mean, oh shit they have abosulte no control of the 2006 election!!!

DUH!!! And not a moment too soon...

[Hippo_Tron]

24. What do YOU suggest that we do about it?

Because frankly I give up. Election fraud has been happening in every single election since the beginning of time, not since the beginning of electronic voting machines. As luck would have it we just kind of forgot about it because until 2000 the last close election that we had was 1960, and GUESS WHAT? there was fraud in that election on both sides.

The only forseeable way that I can think of to fix the problem in Ohio is for Ted Strickland to be 20 points ahead so that if it is stolen there will be riots in the streets. Then if he actually does escape the voter fraud, he can fix the system.

[BeFree]

25. Well, we never rest

...until fraud is virtually eliminated.

The thing about e-voting is that fraud can be so widespread and so much harder to prove. In the old days fraud could be perpetrated only locally and therefore required many hands, and eyes. Nowadays, someone sitting in Ohio can rig an election in LA. Not only in LA but steal hundreds of thousands, even millions of votes across the U.S.

Of course, if, indeed, you do give up, it does make fraud much more possible, eh? If you give up, they win.

[Hippo_Tron]

27. Fair enough, but I just don't like this attitude of hopeless despair

What I have seen is evidence that e-voting is a problem, I completely agree. What I haven't seen is evidence that ANY election can be rigged no matter what the spread is. What people on DU are claiming is that a political revolution with 80+% of the country voting Democratic couldn't remove the Republicans from power because the machines would just change the count. I refuse to believe that we have gone that far. If we do believe that we have gone that far then we simply will ignore the idea that the democratic party needs some serious changes and we can fix all of the voting machines that we want to, but then we will just continue to lose elections.

Besides, I don't honestly see how we can fix e-voting widespread without first electing democrats to the positions that control these things. You can write all of the letters that you want but people like Ken Blackwell aren't going to give a shit.

Like I said above, the easiest fix for the problem in Ohio is to get Ted Strickland elected Governor and get a Dem elected Secretary of State. The same should be done in states all over the country.

[BeFree]

28. Hopeless despair

The only thing that now gives me hopeless despair is seeing so many turn their backs on the truth of how dangerous e-voting is to our Democracy.

It is a catch-22 to get Dems elected when the machines have the possibility of not allowing them to get elected in the first place. So that's where we start. Believe me, I wish we didn't have to even discuss this issue. In fact, its the last issue we should have to worry about.

But being that there is evidence that we must first get rid of the e-voting before we can ever get a fair government leads me to make this issue a priority. Neglecting it, as all of us had for so long, has allowed a great deal of mistrust to enter into politics. Trust is the issue, and e-voting destroys that trust right from the get-go.