Voting machines

Lucid Lounge
21

“If there were any major problems we would hear about it.”

Actually thats the problem lol, the media only says what they want you to hear, not what actually happens,
so we probably wouldnt hear about it if it happened.

for example in Iraq, did you know that over 100,000 innocent people have been shot, blown up, or beaten to death, by US troops? Yes I have seen evidence of this,
dont go by what NBC, CNN, Fox News , all those say, because they are told what to say, by the US government.

You say that many voted for Bush since there has not been an attack since 2001,… Yes your right there, but I dont understand this logic, i mean it doesnt sound logical to me at all,

Bin Laden has stated that he WILL attack USA again. Terrorists are MORE inclined to attack USA now, because of the war,
you cant just start a war and expect to kill the terrorists,
i can garauntee that there have been VERY small amount of terrorists killed, as compared to actual Iraqi troops/rebels and ofcourse civilians.

Terrorists are not sitting in Iraq, in fact they originate particularly from Saudi Arabia, so why isnt USA dropping bombs over there? Because Saudi Arabia tells USA what to do.

-stranger

22

Hey, can my thread stay on topic? Please? :tongue:

23

We heard about LOTS of problems from all media outlets during election day … but now Kerry has conceded this news doesn’t matter.

How about the Democrats in Flordia that voted a straight democrat ticket? … but while reviewing their vote it had them voting for George W. Bush.
Or how about the small Ohio and Flordia towns that had 1000% more voters than people registered to votes. Some precincts only had 800 registered voters BUT HAD >4600 VOTES FOR BUSH!!!
This is an obvious flaw in our election system.

There is more evidence than “exit polls” that something isn’t right in this election.

btw, Ohio is still undecided. Kerry does still have a very slim chance.

and yet, The last 4 years of Bush had more abortions than Clinton’s last term.
Why?
Poor economy and job loss, Bush cut funding to programs that helped young parents, Bush cut funding and programs that taught safe sex. Bush doesn’t believe children should learn what a condom is … he prefers to teach “abstinence” instead.
If only educated voters knew this before election day.

24

If only the majority of voters were educated.

25

We have heard about them!

  1. there is one county in Ohio that only had 650 registered voters yet, somehow, Bush received 5,000 votes in that county.

  2. As I mentioned above, counties where Kerry was likely to do well suffered from a lack of voting machines causing long lines discouraging people from voting. Some waited on line for 9 hours. How many people do you know that would do that.

  3. voting machines and counters broke down in IA and NM.

The stories go on…

To be honest Kerry deserved to loose this one. He pledged that everyone that wanted to vote would and that every vote will be counted… Neither one happened. Kerry, with his army of lawyers, has noone but himself to blame. Like Gore, Kerry failed to challenged a clearly flawed election.

26

It is! Where did you hear that? I have heard nothing on the news or anywhere else about this.

edit-I just got the same information from another forum. This could be very interesting. Apparently as they are counting the provisional and absentee ballots Kerry is closing the gap on Bush. However, I don’t have any conformation that Ohio has officially switched back to undecided. In all honestly it is unlikely that Kerry will have enough votes from provisional and absentee ballots alone. But, if those votes bring Kerry and Bush close enough it could force a recount. Since the electronic ballots can’t be recounted at all it might even force a run off election in Ohio.

27

Have people checked voting machines of the same company in “redder” counties? I’m inclined to believe that this is biased reporting of information (whether intentional or not) by a Republican.

28

Pffft, bias reporting??
Noo! If you were American you would have seen this already covered by all the major TV networks here: CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, and CNN
The FBI is also starting an investigation about the precincts with impossible number of votes.

… there are LOTS!! of problems. In fact, so many problems that no attention was paid to the local vote problems … like for Charlotte, NC … they just finished their election days ago because of a recount! AND!! some machine ate a few thousand votes so the recount changed nothing.

It’s hard for someone not living in America to keep up with all of this, but it’s true the amount of problems is unbelievable.

29

The biggest problem of all is that noone seems to be doing anything about this! Where are the lawsuits! Where are the army of lawyers! We were promised that every vote would be counted! To be honest I don’t even care who wins this election anymore. The issue is reforming the system so people can’t cheat. The system will never be reformed until someone challenges the election.

30

True, the goal here is not changeing the election but to achieve democracy. It will be hard to fix it so that nobody can cheat thought, but minimizing the probability would be prefferable.

31

Yes it is true that we most likely can not stop all cheating. What is driving me crazy is when the cheating is so blatant yet, noone is doing anything about it.

32

you guys (in america) should be getting all the information you have that proves the election was rigged and showing it to all the public, wether it be in form of leaflets left on cars/letterboxes, or handing out papers to people in the city, say, once in a while,

do it for yourself, and the people, you, you are the people, dont accept what the government is doing,

Australians and British are not far off either,…here in Aus. Iv’e had to hand out leaflets a few times, but its hard when there is noone who will bother…

-stranger

33

oh, I was wrong. … the official recount for Charlotte just started today and it may take several days before the election is decided. … funny how long it takes 2004 electronic voting machines to tally a recount.

34

oh wow, even my Hometown of Gastonia North Carolina are having problems!!

“Vote totals fail tally in 29 Gaston precincts”

The state board of elections are being called in to investigate.
This is the worst election in history if you ask me … worse than 2000!!
and our media is pushing the propaganda that the majority of americans “trust the election process” !! hah!!

35

This is insane. There are reports like this from all over the country. Yet you see nothing about it on the news. I agree with you this is getting worse than the 2000 election. What I do not understand is how this could happen with an army of lawyers on both sides watching. We supervise elections all over the world but now it seems like we need someone to supervise our elections!

36

If Bush won because of cheating in the election, it’s amazing that we hear so little about it. Isn’t it supposed to be a democracy? I’d say they should REALLY look into it and not just shove it under the carpet.

Should be a system were people could check what they voted for. Would make it harder to cheat and easier to catch cheating if it occurs.

37

I hate to say it, but don’t forget that both Republicans and Democrats have cheated in the past. Bush won the popular vote by 3 million, but we can’t start from the assumption that “we like Kerry so he must have really won, but Bush stole 3 million votes”.

During the election season, some of the polls were lousy (like Zogby, as usual), but most of them were consistent. Bush was going to win by a few points, that was obvious. His approval rating was about 51%, and that’s what he got. John Kerry wasn’t popular enough to win. He never reached above 48% in the polls, not even after his convention. Bush got 51% after his convention (taking the average of the polls, that is).

Bush won, and it wasn’t as close as people were saying it was going to be. The media went on and on, “this is as close as it gets.” Well, not really. It’s all about money. They want people watching their news shows and what gets more ratings than a superclose race? They always say stuff like this.

“If only 70,000 Bush voters switched to Kerry in Ohio, Kerry would’ve won!”

This is spin to emphasize how close the race was. As if it’s easy to get 70,000 Bush voters to change their minds? Just try it. I know a lot of Bush voters, and I couldn’t get a single one to change their minds, let alone 70,000. If you’re a Kerry voter, do you think someone could change your mind? It would be easier to find 140,000 more undecideds and get them to vote Kerry.

Even if he did that, though, Kerry still would not have won. Remember, Ohio got called because Bush won by a substantial margin. Bush won Ohio by more votes than JFK won the entire USA against Nixon in 1960. If Kerry got 140,000 more votes, it would be close, we would be in Recount Hell right now, and then you’d get to see that Army of Lawyers. shudder

Face it, Bush didn’t win because there were a bunch of Republican Cheaters and absolutely no Democrat Cheaters. He won because a majority of people approved of his job or didn’t like Kerry. All you hear in the media is about how much people hate Bush, but remember that’s what gets the ratings. If you put a bunch of people on saying “Bush is alright, I’m not a big Kerry fan” = no ratings. You get ratings from a bunch of people saying Bush is Hitler.

Paper ballots aren’t that great. In the days of all paper ballots, there was a lot more cheating than there is today. Electronic voting machines are not necessarily bad, they don’t necessarily get hacked–even if you don’t like the outcome. Remember, something a lot more important than the president is determined by machines like these: $$$. All of your credit cards, all of your ATMs, your back accounts are all electronic. Same goes for the other 300,000,000 Americans. They still get my balance correct down to the penny every time, despite the billions of transactions that take place every day. Somehow I doubt my bank would let me punch chads to keep account of my balance. “Whoops, looks like the million chad is a little pregnant, maybe I’m short a million dollars, maybe I’m bankrupt?” (Actually I kind of like the sound of that.)

The future of voting is electronic machines, there’s no question about it.

Remember the exit polls done by the end of the day confirm what happened. The early exit polls had Kerry ahead, but they had the electorate as 58% women and 42% men. (Women vote more for Kerry.) This is not as bad a screw-up as we’ve had in the past. The early exit polls for the 2000 election had similar messed-up results, so they pulled the plug to avoid bad publicity.

The later exit polls had 52% women and 48% men. They had 37% Republicans and 37% Democrats, with the rest Independents. the Independents were split 49% Kerry 48% Bush.

The difference came in the loyalty along party lines–twice as many Democrats voted Bush than Republicans voted Kerry (11%, 6%). No surprise there, Bush had his base pretty solid all the way through, while Kerry ticked off a number of moderate Democrats by bashing the war (the Iraq war didn’t get favored 3-1 in the beginning without a lot of Democrats’ support), and a lot of southern democrats have always voted Republican anyway.

38

I have to disagree with you about the electronic voting. Any system that does not leave a paper trail is inherently bad. I agree with you (As I said in a previous post) both sides cheat. What has a lot of people angered is when it is so blatant. Like large Kerry districts that had only a few voting machines which resulted in people waiting in line for 4-9 hours to vote. I mean we did not have that in cities like NYC and LA. You have to admit that is suspicious considering the fact that Ohio has a republican governor. Lets also not forget that the CEO of the company that made the machines clearly stated that he was pro-bush. Call me crazy but, I think if you build the machines you should be impartial!

This is a serious problem. At this point I am just concerned with the integrity of the system. No side should be able to cheat or disenfranchise voters in any way. Every election thousands of votes are thrown out yet, people don’t know that their vote was cast aside.

39

exactly, and possibly one reason Kerry didn’t put up much of a fight and conceeded so quickly.

That’s not the argument here. My argument is about making sure every vote counts and to reduce the potential of fraud … computers do NOT reduce possiblity of fraud?
Ever hear of identity theft? Yeah, computers have won our trust but that doesn’t make them fool proof.

The democrat precincts in Ohio had less voting machines that republican areas. That says a lot.
In one case 100 students (which are highly likely voting democrat) were gathered into a room to wait to vote. The students asked why? and they answered “oh, you will be voting in a separate precinct” What the hell!!?
The students waited for 2 hours!!! and most of them left. There were lots of stories like this.

Sure, Bush voters minds can’t be changed, but the argument isn’t against that. It’s about oppressing the democrat vote. This is obvious in MANY areas. My local precinct FORBID ANY Kerry political signs in the area, but yet people wore their Bush shirts, hats, stickers, and had their political signs IN THE PARKING LOT!!! … but if they seen a Kerry representation they WOULDN’T LET YOU ENTER. I seen and experienced this myself.

SO! this is OUR elections!! The people!!! Why is there always a rush for 24 hour results! Elections are NOT for politicians, but for us the people. We should learn to be patient and take our time.

[size=125][b]55.6 million Americans voted against Bush’s re-election. That “losing number” is more votes than any winning Presidential candidate to this point in American history. It’s almost 1.2 million more votes than Ronald Reagan won in 1984 and over 8 million more than Bill Clinton got in 1996. This is a LARGE number of DISAPPROVAL of Bush’s policies.

Bush may have gotten the most votes in history, but he also had more people voting against him than against any other President in history.
Bush makes the mistake as seeing these votes as accepting his radical agenda … he is totally blinded by the record numbers that voted AGAINST HIM![/b][/size]

If you have ever had a hard drive crash you know how volatile electronics can be. When you went to vote did you see an electric generator incase of power failure? How would we vote in a power failure?
Do you know the damage magnets can do to computers? One voter walking into a poll booth with a strong magnet IN HIS POCKET could wipe out the whole database. All votes vanished. Recount? hah, yeah right, … you would need a revote.

First off, I don’t agree my credit card is more important than our Presidential election.
Credit cards? they require your signature on PAPER! and you get a PAPER reciept!!
Bank accounts give you a PAPER TRANSACTION for record keeping.
Just recently banks got a law passed that would allow them to NO LONGER mail checks back to the owners. I found this outrageous!! … as did many other people. People like you that just twiddle their thumbs and accept this paperless electronic transactions without resistance.
The harm will come when COURTS and LAWS start to CONVICT people over a COMPUTER ERROR!! I don’t want to wait for that to happen, I want to prevent it.
I’ve worked with computers enough years to know that not all programs are perfect … did you know our Diebold electronic voting machines run on Windows?

It’s already here, and look at the mess it has caused.
The Republicans in Charlotte North Carolina are demanding recounts from voting irregularities, not the democrats.

You read above the problems in Gastonia, North Carolina.
How would you feel if the counties you live and are surrounded by are having problems in the majority of all the precincts?
I have NO confidence in our election process.

I think you are in the wrong thread. This thread isn’t claiming Kerry should’ve won. This thread is about voting irregularities. The media is not covering all of the irregularities because they want to prevent a 2000 repeat by staying quiet about it. … that doesn’t mean places all over the country aren’t having problems closing the election. … and due to eletronic voting machines.

If Diebold starts to manufacture over-sized ovens I’m fleeing the country.

40

I don’t pay much attention to the raw numbers. Bush got the most for him and against him because of the increase in population and turnout. The percentages for and against are more relevant, and also more favorable to Bush (except when compared to landslide incumbents like Reagan, Nixon, etc.).

Bush’s reaction, I think, was probably influenced by the media. All year long we heard about how close the race was going to be. When it wasn’t close, it looked like a big victory compared to the expectations. Also, all year we’ve been hearing about the dissatisfaction of people about Bush and the Iraq war. Then when it turned out that most people approve of Bush, it looks bigger in comparison.

Of course, we also spent a year hearing about all of the Democrats’ get out the vote work and new registrations, etc. We didn’t hear too much about the Republicans doing this, because why report about people who want the status quo? It’s boring compared to The Revolution.

The results were surprising, because it showed the Republicans getting out the vote far more than the Democrats. In fact, of the increased turnout, it was the red states that shot up, while the blue states increased in turnout a relatively small amount.

I think the over-hyped nature of the anti-Bush movement and the misleading expectations it created contributed to Bush’s perception of the results. The same thing happened in 2002, when the Democrats were supposed to have a huge victory in Congress. It turned out the other way, and although it was very significant and unusual for the incumbent party to make gains in Congress during the mid-terms, the gains got blown out of proportion.