2004 Ohio election hack

It's interesting that this was allowed to happen and the fact that it was easy for this to happen. My concern as of now is: what happens now? Back to paper voting?

2004 Ohio election hack

It's interesting that this was allowed to happen and the fact that it was easy for this to happen. My concern as of now is: what happens now? Back to paper voting?

There's voter fraud with that too. I know in Milwaukee there were thousands of votes registered living at buildings that do not exist a couple elections ago, and it's not uncommon for people to rent a van and drive homeless people around to every polling place in the city to vote for their party for money.

Vote tampering needs to be punished by life sentence with no chance of parole, if not an out right death sentence.

How about a voting tokenizer or some other device that can only be used once and you need to show ID to receive it.

I think most voter fraud issues could be solved by having to show an ID and then tying your appearance at a polling station to a statewide DB that showed when and where you voted. I've heard arguments that showing ID is somehow discriminatory to the poor but I don't really understand that, since you need an ID to get food stamps and medicaid. You need an ID to open a bank account, an ID to drive, an ID to buy liquor and cigarettes. Are we saying that identity verification is less important for voting than these things?

I'd be all for a national free ID card for people that couldn't afford it if it meant that people had to show IDs to vote.

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There's voter fraud with that too. I know in Milwaukee there were thousands of votes registered living at buildings that do not exist a couple elections ago, and it's not uncommon for people to rent a van and drive homeless people around to every polling place in the city to vote for their party for money.
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The driving homeless people around to vote thing doesn't really happen. The system actually makes it a pain to vote. You have to be registered well before the voting date, you can only vote at 1 place by where you are registered to live at, you have to show ID and you name gets marked off of a printed list they keep on location.

The whole electronic voting system is a mess anyway. 60 Minutes did a piece describing how most of these machines are built to low quality standards in sweatshops. The end result is that the calibration constantly gets off and the software design is bad so the selection buttons are really close together. People choose one candidate and don't noticed it actually selected the other one...

There's voter fraud with that too. I know in Milwaukee there were thousands of votes registered living at buildings that do not exist a couple elections ago, and it's not uncommon for people to rent a van and drive homeless people around to every polling place in the city to vote for their party for money.

The driving homeless people around to vote thing doesn't really happen. The system actually makes it a pain to vote. You have to be registered well before the voting date, you can only vote at 1 place by where you are registered to live at, you have to show ID and you name gets marked off of a printed list they keep on location.
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It did happen in wisconsin. In SE wisconsin at least you don't have to register if you have an ID, you can just show up at places to vote and you fill out a card for registering at the voting place as you vote. The specific incident I remember the hubub from was I think the 2000 elections. I remember them reading off a list of all the addresses of non-existent buildings that had votes cast.

I think most voter fraud issues could be solved by having to show an ID and then tying your appearance at a polling station to a statewide DB that showed when and where you voted. I've heard arguments that showing ID is somehow discriminatory to the poor but I don't really understand that, since you need an ID to get food stamps and medicaid. You need an ID to open a bank account, an ID to drive, an ID to buy liquor and cigarettes. Are we saying that identity verification is less important for voting than these things?

I'd be all for a national free ID card for people that couldn't afford it if it meant that people had to show IDs to vote.[/quote]
they should just have the same requirements for medicaid apply to getting a free ID card. ID cards bring a whole slew of benefits outside of voter fraud.

Voter fraud isn't going to go away, no matter what mechanisms are employed. The rewards for a rigged election are (at least potentially) pretty big, so there's a powerful incentive for it. The penalties aren't super harsh right now, but making them harsher will just up the stakes for the people doing the rigging. If you're going to be executed if caught, but have the incentive and moral lack to rig one in the first place, I would imaging the rigging to get more violent and devious. There would probably be less of it, but it would be worse when it happened and in turn be in the hands of arguably worse people.

I don't have a big problem with ID cards for voting, provided that they are free and easy to obtain. Note though that using Medicaid standards isn't easy. There are some people who blunder into the system and others who are savvy enough to game it, but the system itself is a nightmare of [font=arial, sans-serif][size=2]bureaucracy and presumed criminality/worthlessness.[/font]
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[font=arial, sans-serif][size=2]But stricter limitations on who can and can't vote just introduces another dimension to vote tampering even as it partially alleviates another. You don't need to fiddle with ballots if you can effectively disenfranchise certain groups at need, and I imagine that there are scenarios where that would be easier to do with less risk of being caught. [/font]
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[font=arial, sans-serif][size=2]No system is perfect, and there will always be those with the expertise to confound a system and the will to do so.[/font]

There're just dipping their toes in the digital voting fraud now, it will be full on bailout stuffing next election cycle. Who'se gonna stop them, we don't have a comprehensive digital voting audit system.. Just a bunch of hacked together systems designed by committee in back door deals with insider companies who have very "close" ties to GOP. Shoot one CEO of vowed to "give" Bush a district on the record.. After Florida I saw how crooked elections in US are.. Oh i still vote, but i have no illusions about it, there is probably massive fraud in 50% of those elections esp those on national scale. I'm sure no one cares who you vote for school board.. but who becomes President? That's too important to the left to the people it seems..

-ddn